Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Bulletproof Your Body & Live Pain Free - KneesOverToesGuy || MBPP Ep. 993

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

In Episode 993, KneesOverToes Guy Ben Patrick, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about the 20 ATG Principles and how building them can develop elite athletes or get the every day person out of pain.   Follow Ben on IG: https://www.instagram.com/kneesovertoesguy/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!   ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://vuori.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

When I was recovering my knees, this looked like the toughest position, but it's actually mastering the toughest positions that have made my knees so bulletproof now. There are some people who say that this much deep flexion is great now, but over the next few years, there will be degradation of the knee. The way the body works, it tends to not do well with avoiding things. So I believe that the ability of the hips to hinge is the foundation of bulletproofing the back. For some reason, some coaches get triggered by the word bulletproof. Bulletproof is a word in the dictionary, and it does not only mean impervious to bullets.

What gave me happiness was going from not being able to play my sport to then being able to play my sport pain-free. You were saying you can dunk better now? Yeah, I'm 32. I'm dunking the easiest of my life. We lose a lot of capacities because we're not really utilizing them anymore. We think, oh, it's because I'm 32 and I'm not 22 anymore. But it probably has more to do with you're not giving your body those same inputs anymore. But if someone's in pain, moving causes pain. Can you explain what you mean by not working through pain?

Like how many people think, oh, your knee hurts? Assist yourself to deep squat. No, it's usually like don't deep squat. It's a different life approach. It is unbelievable the amount of people who can start getting out of chronic pain fast. Power Project family, we've had some amazing guests on this podcast like Kurt Engel, Tom Segura, Andrew Hooperman, and we want to be able to have more amazing guests on this podcast and you can help it grow by leaving us a quick rating and review on Spotify and iTunes. If you're listening to the podcast, just go ahead and give us a review. Let us know how you dig it

and help the podcast grow so we can keep growing with y'all and bring you amazing information. Enjoy the show. The knees go over the toes. No, they go below the toes. I've been told not to. How has that worked out for you? I said fuck it. Having your knees over your toes.

Yeah. Hey, I think it would be cool if you could kind of explain this idea of these – I think maybe it was you and Mr. Infinity talking about these 20 movements or 20 exercises to kind of show, I guess, not just in my opinion, like these would be awesome for not just performance, but for like longevity, health. And when you started mentioning some of the movements, I was like, shit, I should see if I'm on point with some of those. Sweet. Well, I don't mind sharing the knowledge. I'll break down all the 20 movements we work on and like the standards that we go for. The idea for this came from coaching people in person. I was already known as being a knee coach before social media. So people would come to my gym. They were looking to make a transformation for the knee. They couldn't play their sport, wanted to get out of the cycle of surgeries, get back to play their sport, dunk, things like that. And I started to notice that the missing mental point

for them was realizing that, hey, something like a backward slide may get you out of pain. But what we're going for is actually like a measurable long-term change. And that wasn't really thought about with knees. You think about, oh, that works so good. I'm out of pain. Well, I want a measurable change much greater to make you more bulletproof. And it doesn't mean it's an absolute, but we're seeing really strong correlations. When you start seeing person after person who can't do what they want to do with their knee and then they're getting to certain measurables and then you're seeing them able to break through and play their sports and

things of that nature it started to formulate different standards for us a standard doesn't mean that's what someone can do who's like a world-class athlete at that sport they might be able to what it really means is it's where you're going to get the bulk of the gain from getting to. Like you could go farther past it, but just by getting and maintaining that, you'll probably be able to succeed really well in your sports. And sometimes hyper-focusing in on one thing, such as a deadlift and becoming super proficient at it, could not leave enough time for some of the other exercises you're going to talk about.

Yeah. not leave enough time for some of the other exercises you're going to talk about. Yeah. And we've all heard of this sort of 80% of the gain from 20% of what's that? Oh, like 80-20 rule. The Pareto principle. Yeah. Yeah. Something along those lines where, all right, if we're talking about a knee exercise, if you want to get to like your absolute genetic limit, I haven't found that's really where the bulk of the gain is going to come from. So on average, these things

are more like a two year journey. So not a 20 year journey or a 10 year journey, but like a two year journey that I think you can get the bulk of the result, but then can you maintain that? So my training partner, Derek, he's 45 and can still dunk. He's not trying to be world class at any one of these 20. He's trying to maintain these 20. Derek? Derek, Mr. Infinity. Oh, okay, okay. Sorry.

Yeah, first name Mr., last name Infinity. Yep. Derek Williams, a.k.a. Mr. Infinity. You got to pull him up, Andrew. People got to see this man's profile. Got to protect him sometimes and call him by his regular name, I see. Looks like he barely turned 23. Yeah.

So, like, someone could go all out for one type of lift, and they would have to maybe put a lot of risk into it. And so we're really trying to make these things that are attainable, safe to achieve, but then can you maintain all these different qualities? So for him, like, for someone 45, the fact that he can do these 20 things, like it might be one in a million, but no one of them by itself would I say is like that shocking. So if we take it from the bottom to the top, we use number one, we use eight lower, eight upper, and then four extra for flexibility. You have 20. Um, if we start from the bottom, number one for the lower body, we use a tip bar,

20% of body weight, 15 full reps. Um, it might be kind of tedious to get, but in the a hundred dollar or less range, the fact that you can now have measurable, that's going to last you the rest of your life that you can use with free weight, I'm still a huge fan of the Tidbar. So that's number one. Number two and three are calf raises from a straight leg and a bent knee position, a quarter of body weight, additional load for 12 reps. These are very attainable things. But if we even take that Tidbar, you'll see that most people who have been lifting weights a long time are nowhere near being able to do 20% of body weight for 15 reps.

It's not that much. It's very realistic to get to. The idea is the body was designed to work right. But now if we spend 10, 20 years training certain things but avoiding others, we can get out of balance. So I think within two years the average person could actually get to all these standards then as we come up we get to that atg split squat which i think is the king of mobility for the lower body that's my opinion coaching a lot of people i don't think that any of the things i'm talking about are necessarily the easiest to get into and access.

And I'm constantly working at these. Why do you think it's the king? Because you're getting full range of motion on the front leg while also stretching the hip flexors on the back leg, but not just stretching them. You're stretching them and you're under load because your back knee is not resting on the floor. So the fact that you can get that ankle and knee bending on the front leg while also what is the other common option to stretch the hip flexors under load? It's not a common thing to do to stretch them under load. So over time, I'm seeing that for not just the knees, but also the back, this continuous consistent loading of the hip flexors in a stretch position is huge to offset the posture being pulled this way and also to be able to get yourself out of kind of a i don't want to say i guess it's a tough position not not necessarily a bad position yeah

yeah maybe maybe the toughest position and that that the shin on that back leg i think it's important to note how low the shin is on that back leg. Yeah, and that's not – there's the – we're watching the screen. So it's a very interesting thing because when I was recovering my knees, this looked like the toughest position. But it's actually mastering the toughest positions that have made my knees so bulletproof now. Over 10 years, I've never had a knee ESAT back and I play basketball like a maniac. Was this, I mean, this movement's obviously been around for a while. I don't know if, I don't know if I heard of it or seen it done quite to the extreme that you're able to do it,

but is this something that you maybe picked up from Charles Poliquin? Yeah. And has a cool history. Originally, some people were actually catching the bar in Olympic weightlifting like this. They were catching the bar in a split stance. There's pictures of that. I've seen that before, yeah. Yeah. And then Charles Poliquin, who strength coached likely the most Olympic medalists in history, this was a go-to tool for him. And treating it as a weighted progression.

So for me, with my downfall being knees and lack of mobility, this became like, I mean, to this day, it's the movement I'm most grateful for. But yes, that would look like for people who have mobility problems and knee problems, that would almost look like the worst position. And let me ask you this too, about the ATG sports club. What have you seen for, because, you know, a lot of people are sedentary, a lot of people are working offices. So, you know, they stand up and they have kind of shortened hip flexors. And one of the amazing benefits of this is it'll help bring some length to that area, but you can strengthen at the same time. Have you found it to be a struggle for people to progress that movement? I'll give you a protocol right now.

There we go. I've had such a good time. I was on this podcast first two and a half years ago. And the amount of work I've done with Mark on the mentoring and mental side, I've just never stopped looking for these kind of solutions for people. Like it's one thing to think that you're right about something, but all that matters in the end is the results that you get. So bring me that chair right there. And so the office worker I've found can start this just by mastering the position, not even moving. So you'll see here with this chair, not even moving so you'll see here with this chair for someone who's listening you can video it i'm gonna put my foot on the chair and then i'm gonna put my hands on the top of the chair

and i'm gonna stretch my back leg and i'm gonna hold it he's getting into like a split squat position with his front leg up on just which would be like an ordinary folding chair yeah yep so my front leg is in a full bend and my back leg i'm actively stretching so i'm like contracting the rear glute there so 30 seconds each side that makes it tough when you flex the butt cheek on the back side you get a crazy stretch in the hip yeah that. That's one thing that people forget to do. They forget to flex that back glute. And it really helps lengthen.

I think it helps strengthen as well, just even being in those positions. You get more familiar with them. Yeah. So in a perfect world, you would have something to then measure two inches lower and two inches lower and two inches lower. Well, I've been working on a prototype like that

for the last year. So I've been working. Well, I've been working on a prototype like that for the last year. So I've been working. Look, I don't like talking about things that aren't out yet. It's kind of a bummer to tell people, hey, this isn't out yet. But we at least today got to see a couple things that are out, the backward treadmill, the seated tip machine. There needs to be a scalable, measurable mobility box. You walk into the gym, you got station for bench presses,

station for this. Where's the station for measurable mobility change over time? You can do it anywhere. Yep. And then people decide not to do it at all. Exactly. But we have to look at what's working,

what is getting the result, what are people using. There are stations set up for the things that people want results for. And so we need the same thing. The ATG system, when I came on here two and a half years ago, was very hard to apply. Well, that's what I've been working on. That's what I'm going to keep working on is giving every single piece of the system that same user friendliness. you guys today hopping on that seated tip machine compared to the tip bar, which I'm saying the standard and tip bar 20% body weight. We found it lines up the same on the seated tip with 10% per side. What do you guys honestly think in gyms? Do you honestly think people are going to use tip bars or like if that was sitting there and a tip bar was sitting there, what do you think? Yeah. Tip bar is something that probably gets pushed off to the side a little bit. Maybe not

everyone has the same love with getting better at the kind of finer things, you know, increasing the strength of your hands and strengthening the strength of your tibs. And if you have an easy machine that you can slide in and out of, it doesn't take much thought, doesn't hurt at all, doesn't take much of a setup. You just get right into it and you don't have to think about it. Be on your phone. That's what people like. Yeah, exactly. Or like Mark was doing today, and he was pumping curls, bicep curls, while doing tibs.

Kind of taking a pump, you know. Maybe the sexiest exercise of all time, because apparently curls for the girls and chicks dig big tibs. There we go. It's on the seated tib. But if we look at the actual factors of it, like Mark said, he's able to sit down comfortably, get into position. He's able to get a full stretch, full contraction, able to go to failure measurably. Anything you can safely and measurably push yourself to failure on, you end up making a lot of strength progress. Very easy to load the weight on there too, whereas like the Tib Bar, again, those are great tools.

I think they're awesome, but it is a little harder to like load the weight and get it set on there with the collar and everything totally so and and big credit to burt soren of sorenix i went in with that idea because he created the first dual seated calf seated tip but when you see that it's a bit hard to know where to start and jim's already have seated calf machines so we're just trying to supply the same user friendliness of a seated calf i'd say it's even more user friendly than a seated calf machine because you actually don't have to do as much adjustment um slide your legs on in there yeah give it that same yep um so we mentioned tib straight leg calf bent knee calf now we're talking about atg split squat to me the standard is really just maintaining the ability to do that on flat ground. It doesn't matter how much the front heel lifts, as long as the front ball of the foot is down. So for someone like me, I like to load that a lot of the time. Sometimes I like

to do a body weight for high reps. Sometimes I like to do pauses. Sometimes I like to load it. So if you think about Derek at 45, man, if he maintains that, my mom is 69 and can do that and she can sprint so we see a very high correlation but i'm actually not saying on that one how much weight you have to add i think it's a personal thing and we've done a couple posts recently um on my instagram so if you're looking for B-roll of Derek, he just posted one yesterday. It's yesterday. We'll keep coming up these standards. But you can see his sled class video is pretty cool. And then there he's showing one of the 20 standards he maintains.

Yeah, sled class is pretty rad. This on YouTube is my most viewed video of any platform of any kind. This video has over 6 million views already on YouTube in less than a month. Ben, let me ask you something real quick because we're going to go through these 20. But one thing that I've been seeing a bit is there are some people that will give you some blowback on stuff partially because you've managed to grow very quickly.

But there are some people who say that having this much deep flexion is great now. But over the next few years, there will be degradation of the knee. And honestly, that doesn't seem to really make much sense because what we found is when you start to get comfortable in certain positions, then they're not painful. They're not uncomfortable anymore. There could be a danger with like loading something way too heavy. That's on the individual. Okay, you can squat 300 pounds. You're looking to squat 800 pounds.

You might be in for some risky shit, right? But what is your idea on that idea that if you keep doing deep knee flexion, you could risk degradation of the knee in the future? Because I see that from a few people and it just, I don't know. What are your thoughts? Well, it's a great question. The way the body works, it tends to respond to imposed demands. It tends to not do well with avoiding things. But someone should believe something not because I say it or because someone else says it. I believe in respecting everyone's opinion. So I'm not going to ever come at someone for something they say, but I also do believe that you can get to the bottom and get to a truth of something. Like I do think there is truth. I think that someone still has to observe that for themselves.

truth. I think that someone still has to observe that for themselves. So I can only present, this would be me presenting my case. But I'm sure people could present a good case on just about anything. Someone would have to compare and think with the data and then decide for themselves. If we look at it from the science side, there's a study on PubMed that analyzed 162 research articles involving deep bending of the knee. Yeah. It concluded, quote, provided that technique is learned accurately and under expert supervision with progressive training load, the deep squat presents an effective training exercise for strengthening of the lower extremity and prevention of lower body injury. Contrary to commonly voiced concern, deep squats do not contribute increased risk of injury to passive tissues. Now, anyone could go get hurt doing just about anything. But if we go on the idea that, hey, it would be better to have

ability bending something than not, once you've made that choice, now it becomes a game of mastering how to do that. You can go mess up anything. But I know I can walk from point A to point B, and I know that I can bend my knee. but I have to know how to do that. So for me, it did become true because of my experience with surgeries and avoidance and then seeing the results with my own eyes in my own body and then consistently coaching people in person to results.

So maybe I came out with a lot of confidence on social media, but I hated social media. I loved coaching people and I was relentless on results. And to see such consistent results for people who were getting off painkillers and out of surgeries and then increasing their ability in sports. But, man, this was an exact science. This was not just rushing into bending the knee and so on. And you guys have worked with me, and I obsess over the details of this. So once something does become true for someone, then I would say,

now you have to master the subject of that. And this is why things, all right, some facts that we can lay down based on physics. To bend the knee all the way, the knee's going to go over the toes to some degree. So if we tried to get to the lowest level of that, we would find that backward walking, your knee also is over your toes every single step. And if you did this in a pool, you would have a very low amount of pressure. But it is pressure. The whole thing found in the 1970s regarding knees over toes is it's more pressure on your knee. 1970s regarding knees over toes is it's more pressure on your knee. Well, the further studies just found that pressure is how the body is resilient and strong, but it has to be within reason. So if backward walking in a pool is knees over toes, so is landing from a high building,

but you would die. So we're trying to think in training how to bulletproof the body. So never working through pain, understanding that there is a step-by-step progression to bending the knee. Now, when we start to think of loading the knee over the toe, what do we talk about? The first thing we talk about is backward sled. That's because even if that sled was a thousand pounds, it's not bearing down on you. So fundamentally, it is safer and you can work your knees hard backward with a sled or a lot of people have had success with a treadmill not turned on and you work as hard as you can against the internal resistance like in a lot of hotel gyms you can go down there don't turn it on put a towel

against the handle so that your butt is comfortable and you spin that thing for five minutes as hard as you can and your legs are smoked could you hurt? You could get hurt doing anything, but it's fundamentally just based on how physics work that is safer than jumping into knee over toe exercises with weights bearing down on you. So you take this with moderation, never working through pain, understanding general cycles of training and recovery, General cycles of training and recovery. Moderate sets and reps. Not doing things to extremes. Never working through pain, but trying to make a measurable change of your ability. So being able to do things a couple years from now that right now you couldn't do without pain, that's where I see the gain.

Not by rushing into those things. So that would be my case on why I work with a full range of motion. It's worked for me and it's worked for my clients and I have my clients. Yeah. And I like to try to help people, but that also means now I have to master those steps. So the ATG split squat, what's the next exercise? Well, now you can put those things together into a squat. So the ATG split squat, you're working one side at a time. Oftentimes people dislike deep squats, and it's often because of differences between hips, ankles, knees. Any difference in your mobility or pain or past injury history, you might feel that on a deep squat.

Often on a deep squat, when someone's like, oh, I don't like a deep squat, it's maybe they're thinking about their left knee or their right hip or something like that. So we use that ATG split squat, the goal being flat ground. I'll show one for the YouTube video, just a position they can mimic. So this is very simple. My mom can do that. Yeah yeah Derek can do that the average person can't do that we then strength train from that putting it together into a squat we use the slant board and we use floss bands on the knee to reduce the pain and give a massage around the

joint and build up the strength in a deep squat position but this is very light like with your body weight and then gradual dumbbell loading we use that as a stepping stone to then, yeah, this is a great recap right here. We use it, yeah, this video right here, you can see it. So we're showing, I'm standing on a slant board. So that puts my knees in a position to go over the toes and go down and get stronger. But'm using floss bands which pin down so you have less pain and they give a massage now it's showing it showed body weight then it showed dumbbell loading and now you can see how i exercise today i stand on a slant board and i squat with a bar and now i can do crazy deep knee bends and then i can play my sport as hard as i want and

dunk and all this stuff but i follow i go from these super gentle levels over time. Now I can just jump into anything. But it's this step-by-step process building to where then you're squatting with a bar but with full range of motion. So your own body weight in load, full range of motion, for me is a standard for athletes. full range of motion for me is a standard for athletes yeah um but Derek uses we have both of our versions on the app because there's just a couple differences that we will see over time I'm in my 30s he's 45 so for him it's 25 body weight but in dumbbell form on the slant board 20 reps with the elbows staying above the thigh so that's like full range of motion for the knee so what he's trying to maintain the rest of his life

is just a quarter body weight in load, but it's 20 reps standing on slant board, full range of motion. Coming up from there, we shift to the, and for me, for athletes, I simply progress that. Like I actually keep that in the program. So I still do the dumbbell squats for high reps. And then on another day, I load with the bar and I think the

athlete should be able to go full range of motion. I think an athlete should be able to stand on a slant board, a hundred percent of your body weight in a front squat and do five reps, rack the bar, put on your back five more reps. Like that should be pain-free easy. That's the whole idea is that every standard is like, you're not in any pain to do it. Yeah. These are abilities that you maintain. Time will tell. Um, but this keeps us honest by me really pursuing to the best of my abilities in my thirties, these 20 standards, and maybe some slight differences for him. So if there's any differences, I'll let you know. Um, flipping to the back of the knee is five full Nordics um if you search marty saint louis nordic on youtube you will see the form that we mimic we just mimic marty five of these reps it means that your glutes

are contracting first that lifts your abs off the bench because if you pull with your hamstrings first and your chest is still on the bench you don't really know how much of your upper body you're lifting so for b-roll andrew Andrew, just YouTube search Martin St. Louis. Yeah, people do it a lot of times in like a two-part lift it looks like. Yeah, so I don't think you ever have to add weight to it. We got grams. Yeah, you can say grams. But look below that one.

Below that was actually Marty St. Louis. All right, so here's Marty St. Louis. At age 37, he led the league in scoring. To this day, he's the oldest player to ever lead the NHL. Did you see that form? Yeah. To this day, I am chasing that form. Now, he even adds some stuff to it,

but I'm only talking about five of the reps where he explodes up, and then we fight down. We keep it very simple. And you'll see he'll finish out his set, and then he'll fight down on the last rep. Yeah. So there's a lot you could put into it. For me, it's just being able to maintain five reps the way he did on that opening rep, fighting down, repeating five times.

For this one to be scalable, you need the front end of the Nordic bench to be able to lift considerably. So I could jump right into this on a flat bench. But in my gym, dating back about 10 years, we had plyo boxes set up. And for every client, we had plyo boxes set up. And for every client, we would elevate the angle of the bench to the person. So we'd know. So moms were doing Nordics, and so were NFL players side by side. And so I would know for moms, okay, she can do 24 inches elevation, 18 inches.

So just about everyone can Nordic it. Meaning if you're standing up right now, and if you just lean forward a little bit, like that's the concept when you start to realize that every motion does scale to some level if you set up the right equipment for it. The world wasn't really set up for ATG to be comfortable. I'm working on trying to make that comfortable. But five reps, mimicking Marty St. Louis, he went from undrafted to Stanley Cup MVP. And his record still stands.

He's the oldest player to ever lead the NHL in scoring. And his strength coach, Ben Prentice, who was a student of Charles Poliquin, just like I was, Ben Prentice was quoted as saying there was over 20 pro hockey players in his gym, and Marty was the only one who could do that. And when I saw that, I went, I need to be able to do that. And two and a half years later, I did. We floundered around trying to figure that out.

And it just took time to realize, just do the exact same form as him. Just elevate the front end of the Nordic bench and do the exact same form. And that worked. And I've helped tons of people get there. So you can see now some of the formings. This was all before I was on social media. Some of the formings of this idea of standards was you take an athlete who literally cannot, the knee is just on either side, not as strong as it could be. You make a measurable change over time and then they go out and life is different. It doesn't mean it's perfect,

but it's fundamentally different because of the work they put in. This is why I got obsessed with standards and I've always been obsessed with standards. They're not trying to be perfect, but they're measurable changes that work for most people. If you have knee pain or lower back pain, the initial thought is that it's probably coming from the knee or the lower back. But have you ever thought that it could actually be coming from your feet? Most people wear shoes like this. They are narrow, they are not flat, they are inflexible. So it's almost like your feet are stuck in casts all day long. And if you imagine that your hand was stuck in a cast all day, well, your fingers are going to become weak, but then your elbows might start feeling a little bit wonky because your fingers don't move and then it might travel up your shoulder. That's the same thing that

happens with your feet when you put them in normal inflexible shoes. That's why you want to throw those out and start using some Vivo barefoot shoes. They have shoes for hiking on their website, working out in the gym. They have casual shoes like these novices right here. But the difference with Vivo is that they have a wide toe box so that your feet, like my wide ass feet, can spread and move within the shoe. They're flat so that your feet are doing the work when you're walking and they are flexible. So your feet have the freedom to move the way they need to move so that they can be strong feet that's why you want to get yourself some of these and andrew how can they get it yes that's over at vivo barefoot.com slash power project when you guys get there you'll

see a code across the top make sure you enter that code at checkout for 15 off your entire order again that's at vivo barefoot.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Guys, look at this. Look at that bend. I could stick that in my mouth. Do it. I'm not going to do this.

Come on. That's disgusting. No. Get him. So we've covered six now for the lower body. The seventh, and Seaman, I could probably do a whole podcast about this topic. The seventh, now we're moving up because it's lower body, but we're moving up into the lower back. It also addresses the inner thighs thighs and it's a seated

good morning we have a mobility standard of being able to get your abs to the bench without your back rounding so to me the foundation of a bulletproof back is incredible ability to not round the spine so even though i'm kind of known for the jefferson curl yeah we build this on a foundation of ability to resist rounding the back with incredible flexibility and strength so it's two-thirds body weight 10 reps abs to the bench an inclined bench mark you come from a powerlifting background you ever do standing good mornings oh yeah okay so imagine for a beginner doing standard oh this would be a good video because it'll show the regression. But Mark, I want you to think about a beginner doing standing good mornings.

And think about that point, though, when they lean over. It's kind of a vulnerable position. So what I do is I use an inclined bench. You sit on it, and then you can adjust the angle. Andrew, see if you can find there's going to be some point in there where the bench angle adjusts. So you're actually lowering your abs down to a bench. You have a stopping point.

So it stops you. Maybe it was at the, it'll be. I'll keep searching. It was probably at the very beginning, actually. Yeah, there it is. So it was, most of my videos will show so here you go so mark here you go here's the bar in the back but i'm using that to measure my mobility progress it gives me a stopping point so i believe that the ability of the hips to hinge

is the foundation of bulletproofing the back it feels good to do it seated like that too you get to really uh kind of push your butt back and push into your hamstrings. And a regular good morning, sometimes this doesn't feel great. Right. And I'm not- Feels a little awkward, I guess. Right. And I actually have nothing against any movement. I'm just trying to find routes for people to follow. So I think a standing good morning is awesome. I love standing good mornings, but it's much harder to help someone progress to a bulletproof back. For me, in my experience, when I could use an inclined bench,

measure their progress from a seated position. So now they can go from 45 degrees to 30, 15, all the way down to flat, if they do. But you don't have to force your way to anything. And so it gives you a stopping point. So again, it's fundamentally harder to hurt yourself, but you're still able to build up those lower back muscles, glutes, inner thighs. I also think you'll, so you'll notice if you've done, if you haven't done seated good mornings, you'll notice it stretches the inner thighs a lot. It does. In cultures where we stop deep squatting, I think those inner thigh tissues are getting just way too tight.

And so most people, when they do the seated good morning, you're thinking about a back bulletproofing exercise. You should know you'll probably feel in your inner thighs more than your back at first, because that's probably your back is probably not as far from what it should be as your inner thighs are from what they should be because we stop resting in deep squat positions. So seated good morning, flat bench, two thirds body weight, 10 reps, no pain or strain. Real quick, before we continue, don't forget, we're going from the seated good morning. The term bulletproof, and now I think you are someone who has popularized that term, but there have, again, there have been people who are like, well, you can't bulletproof anything.

It's unsafe to say that you can bulletproof your back or bulletproof your knees because injuries are going to happen. This is an unsafe message to put forward. But what are your thoughts on that idea? Because I think it's a great, a great term and idea to use because you do want to build the resilience of these areas. But for some reason, some coaches get triggered by the word bulletproof. Well, it's like if someone's coming at something from an attitude to criticize it, you can find something. I can find things to criticize about myself. And so if that's what someone can find

is that that's a strong word for them, like clearly they're coming at a viewpoint of trying to criticize it rather than talking about the subject material. Bulletproof is a word in the dictionary and it does not only mean impervious to bullets. So I don't know if Andrew, if you want to, do you want to? No, that's good. We'll take your word for it.

Look up the definition of the word bulletproof. It has, words have different definitions. I grew up watching Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles. I don't know if I haven't seen a Ninja Turtle in real life, but it got me fired up. When you've been fragile for a long time, but it got me fired up. When you've been fragile for a long time, I mean, when you've been fragile for a long time, I think there's a bit of a spiritual side to it, that you're like to be able to break free of that and be more bulletproof than the average person when you thought you were destined to be fragile. That's freaking cool. And that got me fired up. So I was never thinking about the terminology because I understood the word for different definitions. So I was using it for the definition of making something more resilient. Someone else could absolutely make their own videos and use the word resilient more. I've used the word resilient. Resilient is a commonly misunderstood

word though. So I try to use words that the average person is going to understand. My videos aren't for people who don't need my videos. My videos are for people who need my videos. And so bulletproof happens to resonate with people who need my videos. It might not resonate with someone who thinks they're smarter than me and very well may be smarter than me. But if you are still a definition in the dictionary. I'm happy. No, I'm happy you mentioned this. Those beards like I do. I have just seen a lot of people who for some reason bulletproof is something that they're, oh, he talks about bulletproofing. You can't bulletproof anything.

Shut the fuck up. You know what we're talking about here. We're talking about making things stronger. There's no reason to pick at that, but everyone will find something to nitpick at. Anyway, cool. Let's continue. My advice is go through life looking for things

to find that you like about people. I'm telling you, your life will get absolutely unbelievable. Yes, it will. I have a note at the top of my phone. I wake up every day. It says, this is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. Easy for you to say you're rich, bro.

But the thing is I was saying that when I was broke. Yeah. So this was unbelievable to me that I could wake up and like try to help people and go to the gym like this is unbelievable that I could to this day I still have the list of stuff to this day it says I can deep squat like that's to me that's still incredible that I can bend my knees like I'm still great I'm more grateful for that now than I was 10 years ago. Tons of pain, lots of surgeries,

all kinds of stuff, right? Yeah. So, and look, if this is getting too deep, then you should join Mark on a five mile run in the morning before you even do the podcast.

I'm getting in the Uber, got the kids to sleep, getting in the Uber late last night to head to the airport, zip up to Sacramento, get the text from Mark. Hey, you want to run with me tomorrow morning? Because he had already texted me like, all right, 10 a.m. podcast. I'm like, all right, this is good. I'll get in around 1 or 2 in the morning, get into the hotel, get full night's sleep.

Yeah. It's like, but I'm telling you, you can't put a price on mentors in your life who, who helped you get a little bit spiritual. So that's why I like the word bulletproof. It might not be technically sound, but it's like, I think you gotta, you gotta have that flair in your life. So Mark has completely, completely changed my life and really made me a happier person. And so I, whatever a hater has to say, I would actually be able to look at it and take anything valuable that I could add.

So I even might mix up the terminology more, not only say bulletproof, but I'm not going to let them make me stop saying bulletproof. Don't talk your shit. No, seriously. No, but I think it's- Say bulletproof. Yeah.

But I've kept saying bulletproof. Yeah. Yeah. So we've covered seven lower body standards the eighth being then everything we've talked about so far was really um other than like you're putting force in the ground being able to handle that force what seems to be the finishing touch is like you still got those hip flexors to lift up your legs and it was undeniable for me i would strap people up to a cable machine have them hold on to something immovable behind them so i have measurable load and i can measure okay now lift

your knees and let's see how strong your hip flexors are and like go to failure till they can't get that hamstring to close the calf so i I could measurably see. It was undeniable in the gym. The people fastest at top-end speed were just way stronger in those hip flexors. Maybe this sounds like common sense that the people faster at top-end speed were stronger at picking up their leg. That's what I found.

There hasn't been a study on it. Go check it out. These standards were not based. I had really never looked at a study, to be honest. I looked at some now to just see is there actual backing of what I'm doing. And fortunately, there's actually some pretty cool backing of everything that I do. But the standards weren't based on that. They were just based on observing hundreds of athletes in person and then observing older people.

And so for those hip flexors, I actually think it relates more to the aging person and women who have had children. Apparently 95% of people after the age of 30 will never sprint again. So even if you thought you were still doing leg day, but the muscles that pick up your legs are not getting stimulated enough. So you start to develop this deviation. Now below the belly button, you're getting stimulated enough. So you start to develop this deviation. Now below the belly button, you're getting proportionally weaker. We're seeing all these like hernias and hip problems. And it doesn't make,

that is a deviation from the natural design of the body. Sprinting should remain part of life. You got to sprint because of danger. Now we don't have to sprint because of danger. So apparently just about everyone over the age of 30 stops sprinting. And Mark, how many people stop running? What's going to happen to your hip flexors when you stop running?

Weak. Yeah. So we saw this as a broad thing. We also saw sometimes that if an athlete was genetically slower and then put in the work on weights but still was struggling and they were still slow at top end speed, we would find that this would help remedy the situation with strengthening hip flexors. So our original standard is lying with a cable machine. You can actually see it in Mr. Infinity's most recent post from yesterday. You can see him demonstrating the standard.

So this is an example of one that if he did not maintain the standard, he would not be moving around at 45 years old like this. His legs come off the ground really quick when you see him. The thing when you see him play basketball, yeah, we throw in a dunk, but it's not really about the dunk. It's that he's so light on his feet, and he seems like a guy in his 20s. He doesn't have that.

Look, some people are tall and slow and can still get up and dunk, but he's very light on his feet, but he's strong in the muscles that pick up his feet. So half body weight, 20 reps, hamstrings cover calves. And I'm showing there in the video the alternative, which is hanging from ab straps and being able to lift your knees to your elbows at least 20 times.

Derek is hardcore, so he said 30 in the video. I didn't know he was gonna say 30. I would say at least 20 reps strict where you're hanging from a chin-up bar. Your thighs never go below 90 degrees like this, Mark. And you raise up here 20 times. 90% of people can't do that. But within two years could.

So each of these standards – so those are the eight lower body standards. Each one in itself is not shocking, but you add them up. So each one itself is something that like 90% of people can do. 10% is still a lot of people. Now you start to add these up and you're getting closer to like 1% of people. But each one I would argue is just trying to maintain the natural balance of the body. These are common areas where we lose strength or that we don't train in the weight room. So our body adapts with that area weaker than it should be. Like I showed, like if you look at the seated good morning,

when we stop in cultures where we stop resting in a deep squat position, the inner thighs get really tight. So now maybe we're not strengthening the back in a deep position. So all of it is just trying to store the natural design of the body. Those are the eight lower body standards. Got it. Let's go over upper body. Yeah.

I feel bad that I'm just like talking like crazy. I think it's going to be a long podcast. Andrew, see if you can bring up a couple clips. I sent you a couple things. I emailed you a couple things. There's a seed of good morning in there from Chuck Wilgapool from Westside Barbell who's using like five plates or something wild, I think. Light morning. Before we get to that real quick though, one thing that, and we've

talked about the idea of microdosing stuff, but with all these things that you're talking about, like you had a chair right there where you did the split squat, right? If you can just get yourself, whether you're at your office, you're at home, et cetera, just think about some of these movements and just think about ways that you can put some of these movements into your day when you're not in the gym. Because I think that's where a lot of people are going to see a drastic amount of benefit. When it's not only in the gym where you're spending an hour doing this and then the rest of your day is spent not moving in a certain way. Can you get into an ATG split squat type position?

Can you get your hip flexors up at certain parts? Can you just get these areas moving outside of the gym? Because if you can, I feel like you'll see progress much faster. That's a great point. And even being a coach, it's not fair because you're in the gym, you have that time. It's part of your schedule. It's your job.

It's not fair at all. But I can totally relate to that because I tend to skip the upper body standards. But now I'm doing all the upper body standards, but now I'm doing all the upper body standards better than I ever have. And the reason is because I put one of those base blocks, pull-up bars versus nice, modern, sleek design. And I put it by the pool. My kids want to be in the pool all the time. And, and I work out outside and because it's just there now, we all try. My wife is working on it. I can do 12,-ups is our standard, 12 full pull-ups.

And honestly, that's normally a struggle for me because I skip even when I go to the gym. I just like doing this lower body stuff. So it's cool what Nsema says, which is that something that's a weaker or tighter area for you, maybe you can figure out how to weave into your lifestyle a bit rather than having to do it only in the gym. So all these drills, like you can sit at the edge of a chair with high reps. Once you learn the seated good morning form, and even with your body, you can be pumping out high reps. I actually have the base blocks, uh, two bars in my living room at home. That's where I can bust out a few pull-ups and dips too. And 20 dip shoulder

below elbow is our, is our dip standard. Yeah. And now I can do both of those, which normally I'm going to fall a little bit short on those. Shoulder below your elbow, you said, right? Yeah, yeah. Shoulder below elbow dip. A great form example of that is Chris Bumstead posted recently, kind of like how we do dip. Like I'm not saying to like overstretch. Stretch to whatever level feels good.

We use a full range pushup, and then people gradually find, oh, wow, I can dip with a bit more range of motion. So just measuring from a side angle, the shoulder below the elbow, 20 rep. That gives us, like that one, a lot of basketball players will fail. And if you think mobility for longevity,

I believe in that strongly, but I also believe in the strength. So I think the 12 chins and 20 dips is a great one for people to maintain. Um, and if you're not used to a dip with full range of motion, I would say to get some pushup bars and realize that maybe you just haven't trained that full stretch of the pack, nor does it have to be a full stretch. You can, you can ease into it and gradually build up, but we do see broadly that people can do this. And then the shoulders are actually a lot more protected once they are a bit stronger through a stretch. I would like to point

out, there's two things that come to mind, uh, in getting stronger for some of these movements that you're talking about. Um, one is just to simply train and to, like, I think the movements that you're mentioning, and I think you would agree, like, your goal isn't to just do these exercises haphazardly all the time and to really train for them. But when you start to implement other movements and you do push-ups and you do bench press and you do incline dumbbell work and stuff like that, that's going to increase the strength of your chest. And it's going to help you to be able to do stuff like this. Check out that dip, how low he is there. Yeah. So that would be like an outstanding range of motion. And in semen, I can relate that actually feels really good and it makes us actually more,

it makes our shoulders more protected. Yeah. But I'm not saying for like the baseline standard that someone has to go to that depth. Um, I, i i would like to i can't do 20 with that range of motion i can do 20 shoulders blow elbows i could maybe get 12 with that range of motion before i tire out because more range more time under tension more tiring so so for the eight upper body ones i can roll through through those a lot simpler yeah and and the 20 dips with your body weight and 12 chins with your body weight, that just ensures you've got good pound-for-pound strength with your body. There's a lot of different body types, but for pretty much every guy, that's attainable. Another way to get better at some of these things is to maybe lose some weight.

It's very possible. You might need to lose some body fat. Yeah, and I find that's also one of the motivating things about having standards, where a lot of them are based on your body weight is they kind of keep you honest. And if a woman is out there wondering, I mean, you could pursue these and be like probably a world-class athlete by trying to pursue these. My wife and over 50 female ATG coaches are in a chat and they're working on these really hard. So between themselves and their clients, we're talking like over 1,000 people.

They're really trying to figure out like what's realistic for women. For example, like we believe that a full range of motion pull-up is like an outstanding quality for a woman to achieve and maintain. Even by just hanging from the bar, that's healthy for you. A lot of people are surprised that you can actually hold the top position. So if you hang to exhaustion and you rest fully, and if you hold the top to exhaustion and you rest fully, and you give this time, you might then find you can resist on the way down. And as Mark said, if you have excess body fat that you want to lose,

that's going to make this easier as well. And if you get good enough going down on a chin-up, you often find you can do a chin-up. So Alyssa can do a chin-up. She's not pursuing 12 chin-ups, but she is pursuing the most beautiful rep that she can do. Kind of like on the Nordic, there's ways to make it more complicated. I'm just trying to pursue that rep like Marty St. Louis. I'm close, but I mean, to this day, I'm still pursuing that gorgeous form that he had in that. And this is one thing that keeps my training really safe is it's not so much like let me just infinitely keep pushing farther.

That's where I see a lot of injury risk come in on certain things. It's almost like what area is going to give me that above average ability that then by just really polishing that and improving my form, like I would like to be able to do my 20 dips with the range of motion that Encima had, that's actually going to be much safer than shortening and adding weight, for my opinion. But I think that's the smartest way to look at it because I mean, I know me years back, I would just want to keep pushing weight, pushing weight, pushing weight, but you don't necessarily need to

to see the progress you need to be a good athlete. And then if you are trying to build muscle, there's a lot of things you could do just with higher rep ranges with like dumbbells and stuff. Because like a lot of guys, like they're pushing weight so they can get bigger. But you don't, to progress at these movements, it's not that you need to push the load.

That's where people can start to mess themselves up if you push the load too quickly. Kind of reminds me of like box jumps or something. People are so obsessed with jumping on the highest box. And it's like, well, you're using jumping in your training as a means to be explosive. And how high does the box need to be for you to exhibit some explosive strength? It would be safer and smarter just to be like, oh, that's cool. I can jump on whatever size box it is, or that's an improvement from six months ago that's cool and just kind of leave it at that but they want to keep stacking it up higher and higher and the same thing with the weights you just want to keep putting more and more weight on and you don't necessarily need to always be able to lift more weight having just some proficiency in those areas can be critical

i agree i still have a dent in my shin from box jumps in high school. I had no 19-inch vertical trying to jump on a super high box, and I've still got a dent in my left shin from a wood box that if I had done what Mark is saying. Look at these good mornings from Chuck Vogapool from Westside Barbell. How much weight do you think that is? I think he's got like five plates on there, four or five plates. And his back is rounding quite a bit. So you're seeing someone do rounded back seated good morning if you're listening to this you're seeing rounded back seated good mornings

with 500 pounds this is the difference that is specific training that was effective for his sport yes that's not what the standards are trying to be it was a guy that squatted 1200 pounds there's a certain amount of strength that it's safer to pursue like this is a really interesting point there's a there's a certain amount of strength that it's safer to pursue that than not right so for him to squat 1200 pounds he's doing an exercise that people would be making screaming raging mad social media videos against but for him it was safer to be that strong because that kept him safer for the 1200 there's some good mornings that i would do years ago how much is that i did a lot of suspended good morning six plates by 600 pounds or so yeah and and and there's nothing wow and

there's nothing to support your chest so he's open load on that back um yeah i mean i could get him so low that i had to like wedge my chubby little self in there for back wow so you're loading your back with how much and then how much did you squat i squatted 1080 and most of my training for squats too was uh with four and five hundred pounds and it was because of that because i would do movements like that that would still give me the same strain. That's what I thought of. Like when I did movements like that, I was like, this movement takes me the same amount of time to squat a max rep. So let's just say, hypothetically, it takes 10 seconds or 8 seconds,

I don't know, from unracking it to finishing the lift. I was like, well, this other movement, it mimics the same thing, but it's with nearly half the amount of weight. So while it was 600 pounds and i did blow my face off uh it it uh it still doesn't register the same way as trying to squat a thousand pounds yeah but it's a mimicker yeah and you use that to make yourself more protected and bulletproof yeah yeah um imagine if you just avoided that and then you're going to try to squat the thousand pounds yeah um but and that was effective for me as well because i rounded over a lot in my squats yeah so i felt like i needed that movement i needed to like work through that yep in order to

be able to fight through that when i went to do when i went to competition and went to squat a max weight power project family if you're trying to increase your muscle mass, if you're trying to lose body fat, if you're trying to stick to your nutrition plan, if you're trying to get fit, pretty much if there's anything you're trying to do for your health, we know that sleep is the biggest determining factor to help you get from point A to point B. That's why we've been sleeping on 8C mattresses for probably more than two years now. And the main reason is the technology behind the Pod Pro. Now the Pod Pro is like the Tesla of beds. It will change its temperature based off of how you're sleeping during the night. And if you have a partner that's sleeping on the other side, they could have their own temperature settings. We all sleep hot here and I used to wake

up in a puddle of my own sweat. That doesn't happen anymore because of the 8Sleep mattress. And I've been getting the best sleep of my life. Now, if you don't want to replace your mattress, you can just get the Pod Pro cover. And you can put that over your current mattress to get all the benefits of 8Sleep. But if you also need to replace your old nasty mattress, you can get the Pod Pro cover and the 8Sleep mattress. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. And you guys will automatically receive $150 off of your order. Again, 8sleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. So with my

good morning standard, I'm actually trying to take that point of truth that Mark used, but how do I apply that to the average person? How do I apply that to a grandparent? And with that inclined bench to stop your chest short, you now can measure the mobility that you have and get stronger and gradually go lower. So I mean, it's the whole system you could actually credit to people like Charles Poliquin, training elite athletes, Louis Simmons, training strongest people in the world, people like Mark Bell, squatting 1,000 pounds. The whole system would be traced from these incredible areas, but trying to make that for fragile people to safely get less fragile.

That's my passion to this day. That's what gave me a lot of happiness in life. What gave me happiness was not going from dunking to reverse dunking. It didn't do that. Didn't move the needle. What gave me happiness was going from not being able to play my sport to then being able to play my sport pain-free that gave me a lot of happiness. So you were saying you can dunk better now. Yeah, I'm 32. I'm dunking the easiest of my life. So we'll see what happens. But I mean, shit, my training partner is 45 and can dunk. now yeah i'm 32 i'm dunking the easiest of my life so we'll see what happens but i mean shit my training partner is 45 and can dunk so it kind of makes you rethink things kadur ziani came and visited kadur ziani is another example of if you want to talk about

full knee bending i mean he can bend bend bend he's the only 50 year old on earth under six foot who can dunk a basketball he came and visited us he took his shoes off he dunked barefoot he ran up barefoot at 50 years old and dunked at under six feet so i'm able to where's spud webber where you at spud he's not now um yeah gain like 40 pounds yeah he got a little thick so look he's 50 and he's dunking um but you can find points of truth he has incredible he doesn't avoid his body he embraces his body's abilities i love the stuff that guy can do it's really motivating in sema sent a video i think it's that one right there or maybe he was like no i know he was on he was on like a post or something he's walking yeah he's

on like a fence post or something. Yeah, he's doing like squats on there and stuff. I'm like, this guy's amazing. That is so cool. So for me, it's when I see that, how can I scale those qualities for my dad, who's 66 and doesn't want to do deep bending? And so that's, I live for how to scale that to the people who were as fragile as I was. And the big thing about.

I couldn't have started with that. Yeah. The big thing about Cador is also like, yeah, okay, deep knee flexion. And he has that ability, but the strength of his feet, like you've seen Cador, his feet and the way he can actually get on the balls of his feet and maintain that balance. Like he was doing that in the first part of the clip. That's a big part of what he's doing. Yep.

No, no weak or tight links yeah his foot uh can like fold and bend in ways i've never seen before i'm like that's how your foot's supposed to work i'm like my foot sucks compared to that there's that and then he'll like go up to like a wall or a box and just start kicking and be like i feel not like this is it's strong right here it's amazing ben's watching i think that what he can do with his feet so he thinks of his foot not as just this dud that's there to plop off he thinks of his foot as more opportunity more opportunity to be athletic to spring off the ground to reduce the impact on the joints by having his foot as a line of defense there.

So I think maybe there's a possibility to get foot to a measurable thing. I haven't been able to figure out like a simple measurable foot standard, but you just started getting more into messing around with your own feet, right? More recently. Yeah. Big time. I mean, the first step for basketball players, you could see everything he was doing there was barefoot. Yeah. The first step for us is wearing a basketball shoe that's not jamming our toes in in the first place. So I'm currently wearing the world's first foot-shaped basketball shoe. It's that simple. Do you have it?

Just put that. I got it on me. Mark was wearing it today. Yeah, I had it in my office. It was amazing to wear. It felt really comfortable. Yeah, it's by far the widest toe box on a basketball shoe. I like the protection on the bottom. I went outside and walked on a bunch of stuff

just to kind of see how it would feel because sometimes in the wider toe box shoes, you also get the feel of the ground. And you don't always, in my opinion, you don't always want that. So that was nice that you got the protection there too. Yeah, it's taken us almost two and a half years. It was after a phone call with Mark that I went and was

jotting notes down. And because I was always saying, man, if someone makes a foot shaped basketball shoe, they could make a killer business. And I was on the phone with Mark two and a half years ago. And he was like, you got to do more. What more problems can you solve? Do more, hit the do more, be more. But he was telling me like, you're not doing enough. And I was like, more, hit the do more, be more. But he was telling me like, you're not doing enough. And I was like, I thought I was doing great. Um, let's go Ben. No, but it, but it, it clicked. And I knew I was like, wow, he's, he's right. I got to keep solving problems. So, and what I just want to clear it up, like what I meant was it seemed like Ben had an amazing ability to get attention. And it seemed like he has an amazing ability to connect with people in a way that I haven't really seen before.

Not in the strength community, not in the fitness community. I've never seen anything quite like it before where everyone was talking about you. And still, I mentioned to some friends that you were coming. And these are like high level. These are cream of the crop people and cream of the crop coaches and stuff. And they're all pumped and everyone's fired up about the work that you've put out there. So I kind of recognize that, but I was also thinking like, it would suck if the story kind of ended here. And that was the only thing that he felt he was good at is making these videos.

And it would suck if he was only the knees over toes guy, only locked into online programming, only locked into some of the things that you were doing, which is awesome and a great business and nothing wrong with staying within one spot. But I saw something different and you're like, this guy is really powerful. I think he could do a lot more. there's the way that your brain works and in our conversations back and forth i was like this guy can invent stuff this guy can create things he could solve so many more problems for so many more people uh rather than just uh instructional video well that changed my life that mark believed in me more than i did and so i started looking at other problems I could solve. And so here we are years later, and it's not so much as an invention as a de-vention. Like basketball shoes should have been shaped like feet.

So my big toes are all jammed in from decades in basketball shoes. And just by getting them into a shoe where now my foot can be as it naturally is, and then my big toe can actually contribute to the motion so in my own way i'm gradually working toward what those qualities that kudurciani has where he's out there barefoot doing uh stuff that would hurt for most people to look at but that's exactly the qualities i want to butt in for a second again too for those people that are putting their ideas on pause and they're afraid to sell something because that was something else we

talked about and you're like I just want to keep you know I want to keep the price you know keep things low and not not have people spend much money on certain things and I was like fuck those people man those people need to get a job do it spell it out J-O-B

yeah let's go No, more about J O B. Yeah, let's go. No, it was more about, um, it was more about what you could provide. And I know for myself, and I know there's a lot of other people that are like me, look at all the stuff that we have on a table, all these grippers and all these different things we have here. Um, when you are getting into something, getting into jujitsu, getting into lifting, um, getting into diet culture, you want to purchase, you want to like show and prove, I think to yourself on the inside that you have what it takes to do this and you want to spend the money for it. So people are literally, when they watch your videos, especially in the beginning, when

you didn't have anything to sell, they got their money out and they're like, they want to give it, they want to support you. They want to support what you have. And they're like, well, how do I do that with like a machine? Like, is there a thing that I can do that will help me do that movement? You know, he's talking about these squats on this slant board that he made himself. Like, how can I, is there a place where I can buy one? And you might be like, this is easy. You can make it yourself and you can direct them to a video where they can make it themselves

and you can give them all this advice, but no one really wants to do that. And sometimes when you reference things to people, they go, oh my God, it's 150 bucks. There are some of those people, but there's a lot of people that are like, I don't care what it costs because I think I need that.

This guy's right. I need to do more stuff for my knees and this would be really valuable. So I think a lot of people have reservations about selling certain things, the little invention they have or the side ideas they have that they're not quite sure about.

It's not necessarily, you know, looking at it as like a little idea is not a good way to look at it. Sometimes it could turn into a full entire business. So just have the guts to put it out there if you feel that people are going to be interested. And it's providing convenience. It's providing convenience. It's providing value.

Some of the stuff you showed us today is amazing. Some of the other things we talked about that you have coming out in the future, those shoes. Can people get other wide shoes and wear them on a basketball court? Yeah, probably. But that's the first one that's specifically designed by someone that plays basketball. And now you can put your money into this spot and they can support what you're doing. And they can feel good about the investment that they made towards the thing that they're working on. Appreciate it, Mark. So yeah, these conversations, I remember walking around with my little son on my chest with talking with Mark. I was always blown away how he would take the time.

I couldn't believe it to this day. Even different, just grown up life stuff. I couldn't believe it to this day. Even different, just grown-up life stuff. Just reach out to Mark. And I hope for everyone they get people like that in their lives. We're not all going to have Mark Bell's phone number. But my parents believed in me. I was so lucky for that, that they didn't shoot down me wanting to be knees over toes here or something.

My wife has always believed in me like crazy. And then the best training partners I've had, um, like Mr. Infinity, we talked about has always believed in me like crazy. So it doesn't mean that has to be someone of, uh, like magnitude that has to believe in you, because this was for me going back, just my wife and I, just kids, and her believing me. So I hope people recognize the value of that regardless of what you're going to do. Because even just by pursuing coaching this stuff,

I was already extremely happy before there was social media or products or things of that nature. So you get to the root of it. Just being able to pursue your own goals, I think is a really cool thing. And I think you'll get a lot of happiness from that regardless of what the exact statistic is today

or tomorrow or the next day. Just pursuing your own goals. So to flow through those upper body standards, 20 dips, 12 chins. I think we were on the lateral raise and the front raise. That's over to the Mark Bell standard. And then 12 horizontal rows, like if you hung from rings and elevated your feet or set up the bar in the rack and elevated your feet, 12 horizontal rows getting the chest or torso to the bar to balance out the 12 vertical pull-ups. So part of it is concepts. Like if someone loves a dumbbell row, like awesome. It's not, these are just good measurements that

you could use. Some people do it as a weekly program. Others just work on the tests here and there. So however you get to 12 pull-ups um and 12 horizontal rows to balance that out i found that really good for the shoulders it's about a lot of people can do the pulls but then can't do the rows because you're contracting different muscles between your shoulder blades and then similar to how the the dip you're pushing downward is then uh 25 of body weight in each hand and doing 10 full shoulder presses. So you're actually like pressing from your posture. So whatever other pressing work someone wants to do, I believe in being pain-free, pressing from your full posture.

So for example, if someone was 200 pounds, 50 pounds per hand, 10 reps, full range of motion, pressing overhead. So that's four of the eight upper body standards. Then the last four you have, we've done videos together on a dumbbell external rotation. So for three of these last four, you're just talking about 10% of your body weight. And most people get great results by start as light as you want. These muscles tend to recover fast. You can make progress on them. So 12 seated dumbbell external rotation, sitting on the floor or sitting on a bench, 12 of those with 10% of body weight, and then 10 Powell raises where you're on an inclined bench.

And so you're doing your sideways on an inclined bench holding on. So you've got a great grip on this. And I could go shoot B-roll after the podcast if we need. 10 reps that way. The external rotation, you're getting deep muscles that kind of hold the shoulder if we need 10 reps that way the external rotation you're getting deep muscles that kind of hold the shoulder blade or the hold the shoulder into the socket then the power raise you're getting now more to the rear delt and the mid back and then the third one is a trap three raise where now you could sit on the bench with your chest on the bench

45 degree incline and now without bending your elbows raising raising your arms up, you end up actually working muscles that are just above your lower back. Your trap muscles extend all the way down. So you have three rows of traps. It's typically called a trap three race, the lower traps just above the lower back. Those are very hard muscles to find and isolate. You can absolutely feel it when you start doing this exercise. Most people are so stiff, they can't get the arms up. So we actually have them start by pushing like they cheat to get into position, and then they fight down slowly, and then they start to feel those muscles.

Such a great movement, but it can be very humbling, the amount of weight you're using when you're trying to do it correctly. Yeah. I think because of the modern posture and all the sitting, that thoracic, that mid spine has really gotten pulled forward in most people. And so they haven't really trained the muscles that extend back. And so that's seven out of eight. or that trap three raise, which is the opposite motion, which is a cross bench pullover. And a similar motion where some people are scared of doing it, but if you start light, keep it in a zone that feels good, build up gradually, I think you end up a lot more protected than if you lack ability in that position. And that's just a quarter of body weight for 12 reps. And so that's almost stretching you in the position that you're going to need for the trap three years so a lot of people are so stiff they can't actually get the trap three standard

and sema didn't you mention uh being like in that position in jujitsu and it didn't uh like most people it would it would might choke them out or it might make them tap but your shoulders have better range nowadays and you're you didn't feel the pain i guess as much yeah when i was in austin and i was mounted by this guy nicholas miragali there is a position where like he had my hand all the way here right and he usually taps people from pressure in this area but i'm just very comfortable there because my shoulders they can get there so a lot of people will just tap from shoulder pressure when their shoulders get above their head it can be very uncomfortable but a lot of stuff like this will help that.

That seems like it would be real painful. That's amazing. And look at that one. Arnold Schwarzenegger was known for those pullovers, and he was doing those with extreme loads. I think he would use at least 100 pounds on those. So that would be, you're talking like half of his weight. I'm only talking about a quarter of body weight. Most of these are like attainable, as I said, within a couple of years for the average person. And it's kind of a blend of mobility and strength. And these are baselines. Even if someone does then add other lifts, someone can do any exercise, any physical exercise they like. I'm not against any form of physical exercise. And I've just had good results with these ensuring that someone doesn't have weak or tight links and it definitely seems that in relation to age

these different areas of mobility start dropping off quick like how little kids can just lean back and do a bridge and stuff like that we find that now adults without training for it by doing these shoulder standards like i can do a good bridge now i never worked on a bridge i remember trying one time it was like it felt so stiff and my shoulders and back feel a lot better. I'd like to just point out I do think that there probably is some sort of connection to like getting older or certain things happen. Even just going from being five to being like 15, there's a lot of like growth and there's a lot of strength and stuff that you end up acquiring just because you're older. And so therefore you could potentially be a little tighter

just from getting older. But I think for the most part, we lose a lot of capacities because we're not really utilizing them anymore. We're not really doing them anymore. Could be a combination of things. Could be a specific sport that you did you know maybe you did cross country for many years or maybe you were a baseball player and always just throwing from the same side swinging from the same side and you develop these tightnesses and you go to do like a tightnesses if you go to do some of these movements later on in life you're confused on like why can't i do that anymore and i think that we think, oh, it's because I'm 32 and I'm not 22 anymore. But it probably has more to do with you're not giving

your body those same inputs any longer. Well, that's a great point. Look, the reality is the body does have its cycle of life, but you look in a lot of areas and you see that aging can have very different outcomes in terms of how mobile we are. So I don't think it's all, Oh, it's only about the mobility or only about the strength. I think it's that yin yang of the two. So yeah, I'm not trying to be as, as mobile as my one-year-old is. That's not my goal, but I'm trying to chew it on his foot. Yeah, exactly. Um, but I'm trying to be a lot more mobile than the average person in their 30s yeah while still being stronger than the average person in their 30s I'm just trying to balance up those qualities so we covered eight lower eight upper

the four flexibility is really simple you have the couch stretch which Mark and I talked a lot about if you're struggling with the couch stretch use a lot of padding I have 6 inch thick mats coming out just for couch stretch so you have just a lot of cushion to get into couch stretch because it's this really annoying thing where the people who don't need couch stretch and are great at it can just plop against the wall on the floor but then the people who really need it the most

struggle to get into position the most so we've been testing different densities and thicknesses and sizes of pads at HQ and finding those people who skip couch stretch because it's uncomfortable and getting it down to something where they actually enjoy it now as part of their routine. But

this subject, as we're talking about now, the idea of mobility in the current gym scene, I think is like 10% of the way there. I think almost everything we're discussing on this podcast, one day we'll be looking back and going, boy, remember how hard it was to do all that stuff. So I'm giving people that as a word of encouragement. Look, if you go work on any of this stuff, that takes some mental toughness to go work on because gyms are not set

up to make all this stuff comfortable. They eventually will be set up that way to be as comfortable as it is to go get on various machines and pump your muscles. That same concept will apply to mobility in terms of their own stations and dedicated comfort. So couch stretch, you're stretching back and then a slant board Jefferson curl, you're now stretching forward

and you wanna be able to get your wrist below your toes. I only think about 25% of body weight is necessary. So in the argument of straight back versus rounded back, I think both. And I'm trying to have two thirds of my body weight in a seated good morning and be very strong and treat it as a strength exercise. But then for that finishing touch, I want to be able to round my spine with an empty barbell, about a quarter of my body weight and get my wrist below my toes and feel incredible and fine and not vulnerable in that position. And Seem and I did a video on that. So if someone's wondering about that subject of like straight back versus rounded back, we did like a, for only two

to three minutes, probably the most specific video yet that I've seen on those two qualities. You have any comments on that? It's an interesting thing. Cause like, uh, when it comes to like what we're doing right now, in terms of what you see coaches coaching and fitness, it's everything has a neutral spine and everything's focused on doing it with the neutral spine, like deadlifts, squats, almost literally every type of sled movement, but they avoid spinal flexion. And a lot of people start getting injured when they do introduce a level of spinal flexion. Let's say that they're doing a squat and they mess up a little bit and their spine flexes a little bit. They're not strong in those positions. So if you can build strength within spinal flexion, you're going to have a more durable

back. And like, when you think about things that we're doing in life, usually people aren't hip hinging to pick something up or hip hinging to bend down and do something or hip hinging to get out of their car. They're flexing their spine and doing it. But as they get older and then they visit some spinal flexion, sometimes boom, Ooh, pulled something, pulled something. Cause you never visit that range of motion. So if you can, like we talked about sledding with a bit of spinal flexion, but the Jefferson curl, if you can just introduce that with some load, you can have a more durable spine in a neutral position, which we all know how to do at this point. That was the point of those heavy good mornings that I was doing. You know, I didn't really realize at the time I could have

probably done that in a different way with a lot less weight and got great results just by figuring out a way to maneuver my spine. But I didn't know back then. I just was like, let me get enough weight that folds me up like an accordion and that should suffice. Wow. And the cool thing with what we were doing on the sled though, is that you're not only, you know, bending in the middle of your back and your upper back, you can bring rounding to the areas of your lower back. So you can start to introduce more flexion in that area, which most people don't really mess with. I don't think people can. I think it is really hard for some people to try to specifically round those areas of their spine. Segment it.

Yeah. Like below the rib cage in lower back, I think it starts to get really tough. I know for myself, we've talked about this before, when I push my lower back out, like backwards, and I kind of roll my hips underneath me, I feel not so much anymore because I've been working on it, but I used to feel like a crazy stretch in my lower back. And when I've showed other people this, they say the same thing. They're like, I don't think that we should feel a crazy stretch in our lower back just from doing that movement. I think that our back has gotten tight and it's got kind of set into this more rigid, maybe overextended position. still needs to be applied in moderation and with context to the area. So Mark was squatting 1,000 pounds, so he worked with 500 pounds in a vulnerable position. So I'm only advising a baseline of being able to handle an empty barbell with intentionally rounding your spine as much as you can and have that feel good.

An elephant walk is one of the simplest most unassuming exercises that has helped so many people work their way out of these continual back problems so while they're working on progressing the safe things like the seated good mornings and but putting their hands on something so they can get into a rounded position without the full weight of their own back gradually loosening up and then progressing from there into the Jefferson curls. And what Nsema was mentioning is just how we use a sled to go backward for the knee because let's say the sled had 1,000 pounds, you wouldn't be likely to hurt your knee. You would just exert and the sled wouldn't move.

But if you put your knee over your toe as if you're going to do a backward sled and then someone put 1,000 pounds on your back, you'd probably blow your knee out so and sema has been doing something i've never seen so he's holding straps to drag the sled with so he's doing backward sledding while gradually rounding his spine because that's a position where he can work that ability where again if i put a thousand pounds on his back and he rounds his back that's going to be but if i put a thousand pounds on the sled and he rounds his back it probably just won't move it doesn't mean someone couldn't get people and get hurt doing anything but fundamentally it's a that's a safe way uh to work on rounding the back so that's that's really cool these areas are not explored that much don't assume everything

you know don't assume everything has already been done if we're here in 2023 and like i'm able to make a basketball shoe that's shaped like a foot yo that's a shoe should be shaped like a foot I didn't do anything I just undid a mistake so don't assume everything has already been done if that is where we're at with billion dollar sneaker companies then when it comes to something like rounding the spine do not assume everything is known that can be known about that

and I'm always going to go with my common sense more than any study or anything any authority can ever tell me. Your own gut instinct is probably true for you. Like you got to learn to trust that gut instinct. So even studies, I think of them almost as clues for where to look. Like I cited a study on deep squats, but I hated deep squats. But it gave me a clue that I wanted to be able to do a deep squat. Like it's a clue for someone, okay, that might be a good idea. It doesn't mean to force into a deep squat or just blindly follow the study. And so it's the same with rounding the lower back is maybe something is said that that's bad.

But there's also studies that show that people who are stiff when they round, like people who can round better have less fear around their lower back. People who can hinge have less low back pain. So you want to be able to hinge without rounding, but you also want to be able to round. So how do I feel about my back? No pain and no fear around it. So I want both. I don't want to live in fear and so the best back success stories i've seen were not one or the other they were being able to resist rounding very well while also embracing the ability to round yeah the funny thing too is like for example myself i had more lower back pain when i was much stronger in the squat. And it's not like being strong in the squat and deadlift gave me more lower back pain, but it was because I was so stuck in that way of keeping my back that then when I would

introduce some rounding, I'd pull something or I'd have lower back pain. So then I would avoid any type of rounding in that area. But as like I said, as I've introduced, starting to do a lot of the things that you were talking about, Jefferson curls, seated good mornings, rounding my back while on a sled or doing any movements on cables. Wow, I don't have back pain anymore and I feel very comfortable exploding into a rounded back position with no issue. So it's like we're told by a lot of professionals, avoid that. We're told by a lot of professionals, avoid that. You know, I've seen professionals make videos about how you want to avoid that area and avoid doing that. But it's like, if you continue avoiding that, you're probably going to be living with some form of pain for a very long time.

It'd be interesting if we could, you know, do some of it in collaboration with what we know now. You know, because, you know, we were were – I mean I think strongman guys and like there are certain people that kind of had some ideas about like kind of how to round the back and stuff. But again, I just kind of knew what I knew at the time. And I – when it came to something like a deadlift, what I noticed in deadlifting because there was always a lot of controversy on like, can the spine, you know, move this way or that way. And I always felt that you could round the spine. But I also felt that once you started the lift, you had to be really cautious that you don't continue to round over more and more and more as just like an error in your form and technique. But some of the stuff that you're saying and some of the stuff that you're pointing out and some of the stuff that we've been working on more recently is stuff where it's not so much just about the weight only. Like the weight can be part of the challenge,

but it's not like, oh, let me throw 45 more pounds on each side and see what that feels like. Let me do that again. Let me do that again. You know, you're not just going to keep jumping 90 pounds. A lot of times with some of these movements, it could be that you're holding a kettlebell. It could be that you're holding a dumbbell. I think some people are kind of frustrated with that because it doesn't look as hardcore. It doesn't look the same, but we don't really care which way it looks like. We just want stuff that's going to make us feel good and stuff that's going to feel like stuff that feels like it's progressing us forward for the goals that we have. Yeah.

And that's exactly why I love having measurable standards. Yeah. Because it gives me some safe targets to pursue where I don't feel like I have to keep putting more weight or something like that or feel worse but hit more weight. Like I can take something that I can already do and master it with even better form, even more control. So it's tough doing something when you don't have a goal. Like I'd rather have a goal than no goal or an infinite goal that I can't achieve. So by no means am I trying to say that these 20 standards are perfect, but I like having some goals and,

and I do a lot better. I find myself more motivated and look at my, my movement quality has improved a lot because it's not, okay, now I have to add even more weight, more weight, more. I'm finding what is above average, but then mastering that with even better and better movement quality. So it gives a, it gives a sense of accomplishment in a way. So you have a hot date coming up and you look in your closet and all you see are the old ugly clothes that you usually wear and you're going to wear tonight. It's time to end that, guys. That's why we've partnered with Viore Clothing because they have some amazing athleisure clothes that you can wear in the gym when working out, but also clothes that you can wear on a date or during Hanukkah or whatever. You can wear these

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That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash powerproject, and you'll automatically receive 20% off your order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. So the couch stretch stretches back, then the Jefferson curl stretches forward, and then you still have inner and outer hip. So you have groin and you have like piriformis piriform pear shaped it's a pear shaped muscle if anyone's just like confused piriform it like well that's the name it's just latin for pear shaped and it's a muscle on the outside of the hip and yeah you talk about stuff i mean i i can stand here and i can put my mean, I didn't put my toes in my mouth.

I put my shoe to my forehead. Have you put your toe in your mouth before? I don't really – I mean – Why are you stuttering? When did you do this? He's like, I don't do it for fun. It's just to prove a point. The range of motion is there. I don't really want to taste my toes.

But the point is that you do still have the inside and outside of the hip. Yeah. the inside and outside of the hip yeah and for any of these 20 it's not i try to find the simplest most workable way to to get there and for the inside and outside the hip my current standards are actually relaxing ones because you're putting a lot of effort into the other exercises and so for the groin i want someone to be able to sit with the butt against the wall and spread the legs and reach 120 degrees. Okay. There's a wall groin stretch. Because you have the weight of your own legs, there's actually a bit of isometric strength going on.

I keep a light contraction in the quads. I'm really stretching the groin and putting it under some load of my own legs. and putting it under some load of my own legs. And don't force 120 degrees, but if you find yourself only at 90 degrees, it just lets you know that it might be a good idea to spend a little more time on that. So could someone then add further groin stuff? There is actually a lot you could do with the groin.

Like I would say, something like jujitsu, you might want to go beyond that and go check out my guy in SEMA. He has some very detailed groin progressions because he needs advanced levels of groin bulletproofing. So I think, for example, if like in SEMA is one of the types that I'm sure could just master all 20 of these standards in his sleep. He might see similar things of what are good measurable targets to get to for jujitsu. So I hope this even inspires people in other areas. It's not like these are the only 20 that someone can do.

I find that for the average person, when you're already mastering those 18, and now it comes time for the inside and outside hip, just go relax against the wall, man. Enjoy it. Good job. You're working your butt off. now it comes time for the inside and outside hip, just go relax against the wall, man. Enjoy it. Good job. You're working your butt off. Yeah. And just relax.

Stretch the groin. And just by doing that alone, you're going to wind up with like because you're doing these seated good mornings and full range of motion, like your groin is actually going to build up a lot of strength around it. Full range of motion, split squats, and seated good mornings, you're going to build a lot of adductor tissue. You will be surprised by how much you get from the seated good morning in the groin it's wild yeah so for so for the average person against the wall is a very easy way to stretch the groin and there's actually an easy way to slide into i think i've seen mark bell doing against the wall with for the outer hip it's like it's very i love that moment feels great yeah it's very relaxing and and if you know the one when you do the outer hip against the wall,

that leg that's like pushing against the wall, to be able to hit like at least 90 degrees, meaning someone very stiff would be like farther back. Why am I not able to envision what you guys are talking about right now? You're not talking about this anymore. What are you guys talking about? If you finished your groin stretch and you put your legs up and then you put the side of your foot against your thigh.

Ah! And then slid your foot down. Okay. Like, these are not, like, complicated inner and outer hip stretches. They're just good baselines to relax down. Okay. Because I've seen that it's almost, for the average person, there is some degree of risk involved in almost anything you do.

So I'm not trying, like there are more advanced things you could do than 12 pull-ups, but walking through life, like you're not going to be a chump because you can only do 12 full range of motion pull-ups. Like you could absolutely go farther for rock climbing and Seema would probably have to take his absolutely go farther for rock climbing and sema would probably

have to take his groin farther for his jiu-jitsu although if you compare it to the average jiu-jitsu person just being able to do the full range of motion split squats and seated good mornings you'd actually probably already be above average but 100 but and sema could take that concept and he could turn his groin into like and sema might not want to be in the top 10% for growing. He might want to be in the top 1% of 1%. It just, it is what it is. Like the ankle or the knee, like really like the, like the ankle for basketball, I see with like the, the world's highest jumpers is their, their tibs are like in the 1% of the 1% pound for pound.

That doesn't mean I think everyone has to just like get that level of strength in the tib. So, um, so those are the 20 standards. Covered all 20. There we go. Yeah. If people want to do them, I remember two and a half years ago

when I came on, I was having to use like other app services and like original online members of mine worked their way over years to we have our own app in the app store so it has the least clicks necessary like the most user-friendly way to film yourself and send it in and then we answer you under 24 hours seven days a week so you don't just get to say you do 12 chin-ups like we actually have to pass you and then it tracks it for you like all like the 20 standards it's like it's

pretty cool so that's a lot more user-friendly than it was two and a half years ago how are you uh balancing all this now uh because you are doing more and being more it's it's too easy man it's like people have real problems out there like we're lucky that we get to work on this stuff it's not work i mean it's it's too easy like i'm not one of these people who's gonna to bullshit you and be like, let me tell you how to be productive and like you got to like, I don't know, like enjoy what you do and like find something. I'd be lazy just like everybody else if I didn't have a purpose in life.

So I don't know, start there. Like find something that actually gives you a purpose in life. And then, yeah, you might end up doing things that someone else might look at and go, wow, what a hard worker. I have weird things like that that I do that someone would consider as hard work. But it's like, come on, dude. Like I'm not – what would be hard work is out working construction in the heat right now. That would be hard work.

No, I'm serious. Like just because someone has money doesn't mean they're mentally tough. That dude's tough out there working in the heat right now, working construction. Laying roof in Florida. That's harder than my job even though I might do some things that someone might consider like crazy levels of work ethic. Nah, it's bullshit, man. It's just we're having fun. Yeah.

It's not hard. Yeah. How are you managing with the kids? You got kids. You got wife. You got a bunch of other responsibilities. I mean, I'm true. You got two little kids, right?

Yeah. The fact I get to work online, it's like it's not fair. Like these people have to go out and grind at nine to fives, like away from their family, and they're trying to work in fitness and these various things and picking the kids up from school. Like I get so much time with my kids because I get to work from home essentially. And, uh,

you know, even one, because we work online, I've had wonders of where should I live? And this and that, guess who talked me through it? Mark Bell did like, we're,

we're, we're doing great. We have good people in our lives to guide us and keep us mentally straight. And that's kind of where Mark Bell has kept my mind is like, like it's kept me in such a position of like being grateful, seeing that I get to be playing games on things that I enjoy. Um, so not really taking like the life decision making so seriously, like life just doesn't have that seriousness to it. Oh, boohoo. My plane is delayed or something. It's like, it's like, I almost feel like going out in life and seeing how the average person is viewing life. Like

they're so, they're so crushed down by the seriousness of it. I feel like I'm like watching from the outside in almost like I wish I could just give them that feeling to like, just relax and breathe. But that's because I've been able to go through these experiences and have mentors like this to taught me not to be watching the news and these things that we don't that the average person is doing that's like stressing them out like crazy chewing them up what you got over there andrew um even just like hearing you speak from now to like the first time you were on the show you know two and a half years ago, it's gotten so much better,

but like for yourself, like, have you noticed like your coaching abilities or maybe your ability to like instruct stuff? Um, where do you think you've like gained the most like abilities and when it comes to being a coach? I was lucky to have,

and thank you. I was lucky to have all that in-person experience. And then online brought new challenges because I didn't have all my tools to hand. I couldn't massage the person through it and floss their knee myself. So that brought, I would say the online almost brought a lot more patience. You're like, oh my God, these people are lying. They're not actually doing the program. Patience and tolerance and not taking it personally. So how am I going to do this?

And this is it. My gym doesn't have it. And like, so I had to learn a lot more patience. Like I was a lot, I'm a lot more patient now and a lot more understanding now than I was two and a half years ago. But then keeping that connection, we've opened back up our headquarter gym in Clearwater, Florida, where I had a gym for seven years before the pandemic. And that's also been really valuable is like actually keeping some of that in-person connection,

letting struggling cases come see me. And in addition to that, man, I've had some high pressure scenarios over the last few years of working with some of the most famous people in the world where you got 20 minutes and you need to get them an e-breakthrough. So that's much higher stakes of pressure than I had before this thing took off. So yeah, so for me, the difference in coaching would be more understanding of where the average person is coming from and working with them in a gentler but still very precise way. Like I have to, it's like it's on me, even more responsibility on myself, not like, well, too bad this idiot won't go find a gym with a sled and won't get results so that's on you you got to go find like that kind of a thing like shifting

it more from like if there's an area where i'm not getting a result like fully taking responsibility like i that's that's on me as that's a shift for me that's awesome ben i want to ask you this because um we were talking in the gym, and we don't need to name names here, but the thing is I think a lot of people, especially as we've been going down the rabbit hole of the feet for a while, I've noticed massive benefit athletically, the way I move, everything, right?

Just from my feet getting stronger, my feet are thicker. It's like there's way more tendons that are visible. It's made a big difference. Now, you see a lot of coaches who are like, well, you look at some of the best athletes. Look at the shoes they're wearing. Look at their feet. Their toes are crossed on top of each other, but they're still competing and working on elite level. And at this point, you've been able to be hands-on with a lot of elite level, professional level athletes. What type of feedback are you getting from these athletes about their feet? Again, without naming names, but you've now had experience with people at the top.

What do you notice? Yeah. So out in basketball, the average shoes are jamming all of our feet together. So for the person out there to understand, if you look at LeBron James and Michael Jordan, and if you look at their feet. You had that queued up. Yeah. I mean, of course. Only because we literally just talked about them on a previous episode. Yeah. I knew it was going to be there.

Yeah. And so some people jumped to a conclusion that this jammed in foot was better for performance. But first off, you have to understand that because of the footwearwear that everyone's shoes are being jammed into the same position. So there's not really a fair comparison. Um, if we look at Kudur Siani, who spends all this time barefoot and working on his feet and making sure his foot is open and that he can use, he thinks of that big toe. Oh yeah. Like in strength training, you have something called triple extension, your calf extending, your quads extending, your glutes back extending.

And then there's also, I've tried to help popularize in addition to that, triple flexion. So like your tib, like the other side of the calf. Yeah. And then like your knee flexion, the other side of the quad, and your hip flexors, the other side of the. So you got triple extension, triple flexion. But he calls it quadruple extension because of his big toe so he thinks of his big toe as extra the guy's 50 years old under six foot and can dunk who's to say lebron james wouldn't jump a couple inches higher if he had more use of his big toes so i think it's like that i don't jump i don't jump to conclusions that okay just

because michael jordan and lebrron James' feet were jammed in, that means now jammed-in feet are better. You know why? Because my feet have been jammed in for like 20 years, and I had a 19-inch vertical with jammed-in feet, and I have a 40-inch vertical now with jammed feet. And I'm actually feeling a bit of improvement from letting my big toe now contribute to it by getting into a shoe like this. So I can only relate to, okay, me at 32 is feeling the best I've ever felt on the court by having access to my big toes. So, um, we would

have to have now a fair comparison, but someone should experience it for themselves with any of this stuff. You should experience it for yourself and see what you think. But man, I always kind of tend to go back to a common sense approach and if you've got access now to those big toes to being able to assist you um and and on the other side of that is is pain and chronic conditions that arise often like a lot of people have foot pains yeah and so i've seen for athletes that foot pains can be a big limiter of performance progress because when you have a pain and you go try to exert at 100% and it's holding you back, that's why like for the – I think the knee is the number one sticking point on people jumping higher because they're often – they can't express their full intent without pain. So they can't adapt.

And so with the foot, the foot is a pretty common one. And if your foot is hurting when you go try to jump off it, it's going to be limiting your progress. So for the LeBron James of the world, I just think they would be even healthier and go even higher. They're at such a high level, it might be a small amount, but you might not see while you're watching on TV that the game's more enjoyable because they're not in chronic pain.

So anything like that is like, um, people don't have to do every single thing in every single exercise, but it just makes sense to me that to get the foot involved in the motion, let your foot act as it should not be jamming it in. It'd be an even better athlete. Like that's just my, my viewpoint. Let me ask you this also. On top of that, obviously wearing white shoes and being more barefoot, has there been anything that, because I know you haven't necessarily made standards for this yet, standards for the foot, if there are, you probably will at some point.

But what are some other things that you would tell people to mess around with? Like we like gloving our feet, right? And like doing all that. We like smashing our feet on top of hard stuff. But is there anything that you would tell people to start venturing down this rabbit hole of stuff for your feet? Maybe things you're personally exploring? Um, I would say to study from people who have the results that you want. Okay. So Kajurciani is a great place to start. So, okay, what exercises does he do for his feet? He has a whole ass book. Yeah. Can you, can you get into those, any of those positions without pain, recover, build up, maybe you'll feel even better. Um, but I don't think it's best for me to jump into trying to apply standards to something. I don't have that decade of experience coaching

thousands of people. Gotcha. So even if these 20 don't approach the feet, I think that in some of these areas, like notice I didn't mention a grip or a hand standard and I didn't mention foot standards. Like I think those can come about from people who have put in that same body of work into that. So that would be my advice. Okay. Do you have any foot videos up?

We've talked about the feet on multiple podcasts. We had Kador on and he's talked about stuff in his book. Graham Tuttle, Kador. There's a lot that people can look into for the feet. And like other areas, I would see if you could find a pain-free exercise in there that you can add to your routine and get some progress on. Yeah. Even doing things like progressing to doing some squatting on the balls of your feet, getting some deep flexion in the toes, or that'd be extension in the toes, I guess.

But getting range of motion back into those areas over time, it'll make a big difference. Like it's, it's just for me. And I think probably for you too, Mark, it's just so wild how different the feet look now versus a few years ago. Like it's ridiculous how crazy they look and they're just going to keep progressing. But the fact that over probably 25 years, even though I was a soccer player for 15 years, like my feet weren't as developed as they could have been. It's shocking to me. It's just a big missing link for me you know bingo and so yeah for me as far as i ventured is okay let me not be jamming my foot together while i'm trying to exercise yeah play basketball and i can even feel when i play you know when you have that really nice level of doms like delayed onset muscle soreness yeah that you know like you

it doesn't mean you always have to have that and you should usually when you give that same stimulus you'll adapt out of it but since playing now in a shoe where my my foot can be natural i've got like some nice little doms through like some foot areas that i feel like i'm walking around the next day and like i can feel my foot muscles more active yes and then when i'm doing the backward now when i'm pushing backward with my foot able to move and i'm starting with a very moderate big toe spacer i'm not trying to overdo it first just gradual approach and try to work my way until my feet look like feet naturally should but i can actually feel my big toe pushing rather than this club just pushing into the ground so that's as far as i've gone is I do my backward. I like,

I make sure that I do my basketball and my workouts in a foot shaped shoe with a moderate big toe spacer so that I'm in engaging and I'll, I'll keep going from there. What else you got, Andrew? You had said it a bunch of times. Something along the lines of not working through pain. But if someone's in pain

and moving causes pain, they might follow the traditional doctor prescription of rest until it stops hurting. And then they go to move and say, oh, it still hurts. And I want to do this knees over toes thing, but everything I do hurts. So can you explain a little bit more about what you mean by not working through pain? Because again, people have heard that already on a different context of don't do anything that hurts. Yeah, it's a great point. You want to become an artist of finding those moves and levels that even if you are in chronic pain that you can actually get into and not be in pain so like one of the most common for the knee is going backward like someone who's actively

has chronic pain can do it doesn't hurt to do it and by doing it feels better rather than like more beat down so you're going to find gems like that for almost the whole body. You're going to find little gems of motions that you actually can get into. So there's little tricks like that. One of my absolute favorites is how Kelly Sturette popularized floss bands. And I use people standing on a slant board. Actually, it was one of my more recent posts that you pulled up where I was showing using floss bands. So you can take someone who's in chronic pain right now. You can pin things down around the knee so that when they go to bend, it's like, oh, wow, that doesn't hurt like it normally would. Yep. This one. So you're, you're able to take someone in chronic pain. You put chairs next to a slant board so you can assist yourself like how many people think oh your knee hurts assist yourself to deep squat no it's usually

like don't deep squat it's a different life approach no find that starting level you could do it is unbelievable the amount of people who can start getting out of chronic pain fast with a slant board plus floss bands it's it's like it's like i it's it's hard to overstate when you're someone who's like spent years and then you help people that in a single i mean in like a couple minutes you can often get like breakthroughs that they haven't had in years wow because you're getting them into motions that they haven't been able to do because of the pain but because of the floss band. So the combination of the floss band plus the slant, I think like if, if my only career

was just going around doing that for people, I'd be a happy man. If all I had was a pair of floss bands and a wooden slant, I would, I would love my career. What is it about the bands that help alleviate pain? Well, like, like any compression and these, you can get some pretty tight compression. You just do it for that. Like I just do it for 10 squats and then take them off. So the, the pressure of it simulates as if you didn't have the swelling or whatever was there that's causing the pain. So like anyone knows, like you can, like compression can, can short term alleviate pain. The difference is you're using the compression not to avoid motion. You're using the compression to get into motion, which is very unique.

And so it also acts kind of like a massage around the joint. So you notice it starts recovering a little bit faster. So it's like maybe there's tight tissues around the joint. I actually think massage makes a lot of sense in like it's a natural thing with your hands on a person. But how do you massage your knee, like your knee, your ankle, like the joint a bit like your knee your ankle like the joint so to me that compression around the joint acts like a massage around the joint yeah what's what's

got a smile i just it's like my own fashion really no explain that yeah it's a big part of what's going on yeah yeah explain that well okay so we're i think it's a great topic yeah what's going on. Yeah, yeah. Explain that. Well, okay. I think it's a great topic. Yeah. So myofascial release and pretty much just like getting pressure on different areas is something that we've found to be really, really beneficial. And it's something that, as Mark has seen and we've all seen, some coaches think it's totally – what's the word I'm looking for? Placebo. Like if an athlete rolls on a foam roller and they feel better, okay, cool. They feel better, but it's not actually doing anything. But the number of

people that have come onto the podcast, Chris Godowski, a bunch of others that have talked to us about myofascial release and we've done it. Personally, we've noticed just a massive benefit on getting some release on the glutes, the back in different areas, the traps, right? And me being an athlete who I roll every single day, there'll be some times when I come in, in different areas, the traps, right? And me being an athlete, I roll every single day. There will be some times when I come in, I'm like, ah, something in the lower back a little bit. And when you say roll, do you mean? Jiu-jitsu.

Jiu-jitsu rolling. Okay. So I'm just trying to help that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're talking about rolling on the mats. Yeah. So that's like an intense sporting activity. You're grappling.

You'll get bruises, bumps, stuff here and there, right? But since we've built the practice of doing some fast release it's like boom you get in the gym you do some stuff on the hamstrings the glutes back etc oh why is that pain that was so fucking annoying and it hurt why is it just suddenly gone and it's not like the thing is it's like that is on top of all these other things that are done, right? So it's like that pressure that you put in those different areas, it's something that's relieving a lot of other stuff, which is just kind of what you're showing with the Voodoo Floss because there's a lot of pressure above and below the knee. It's kind of like you're smashing but moving around the joint, right? So that's why I just – I think it's so beneficial. But some people think it's pseudoscience and placebo

and that's blocking some people who would maybe try it from giving it a real shot. I think that's unfortunate. Yeah, and fortunately, there's really awesome people that you can learn that from. And there's really awesome people that you can learn diet from and supplements from. And so I just kind of concluded that it's better to stay on what I could bring uniquely to the table and spend more time on that than anyone and bring that to the table.

And so I did feel – so I don't floss. I've only done it in the last many years. I've only done it for videos because I don't have to. I don't take any supplement that could relate to improving my joints and I don't do any body treatment of any kind. I just do those exercises.

That keeps me really in tune with what can I get out of those exercises. I think it's pretty cool what you can get out of a body just from those exercises. So it wouldn't be fair if I mastered these other areas. I wouldn't really know. Maybe on the exercises, I might not have figured out as many regressions if I was able to go

get some relief. That's true. So it's really about staying true to my process on that. Yes. Some things, it's not that it would be wrong to add. It's that it wouldn't be true to the process of what i just did like i think there's a lot of value in uh recognizing the things i did and staying true to that and i'm still neck deep in just trying to smooth out the equipment for the average person on every step of the system so i got a lot of years of work ahead of me just on that when other people have put in those thousands of hours on the myofascial release in those areas.

Chance to help a leopard by Kelly and Chris Godowski. Same with diet. I think you got to conclude with diet. For anyone out there who has not tried this steak shake, I was scared to try it. I've seen it. I thought it's so cool how it has these different broad spectrum of nutrients in it, but I was so afraid that it would taste awful. And it's actually, it might be like the best tasting protein shake I've ever had. Here we go. This is my second one

today. Mark and I did a five mile run this morning. He made me a shake when we came in. Then we did a bunch of filming and I just drank while we were on this podcast i just drank so what if i had like 100 grams of protein today oh yeah so i i feel outstanding and it was delicious so if you're like me and you were scared to try the steak shake it might blow your mind mark is there testicle in there oh yeah now there is no it's still the thing is it's still delicious enough that it's like, all right, whatever. I'll get some tested for that. It just tastes like it's not on the edge. You must have done a lot of testing.

Yeah. It took a long time, especially because it doesn't have any artificial sweeteners or anything like that. Holy. It was a pain in the ass to figure that one out. Wow. Sometimes you get pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting that. I'm glad you like it.

So you've gotten your labs done, whether it's six months ago or a year ago, and you want to know where things are at, but you don't want to get a full panel again. That's why I've partnered with Mary Calthone by Derek from More Plates, More Dates, and we have something called the Check It Panel. This is an affordable panel with 55 different labs that allow you to see all those different biomarkers. And you can get this channel every month or every two months, whatever frequency you like, but it'll give you all the specific labs that you want to know so that you can make sure that you're moving in the right direction for your specific hormones. Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. And at checkout, enter promo

code PowerProject to save 10% off the PowerPro Project panel, the checkup panel, or any individual lab that you select. Again, that's at MerrickHealth.com slash Power Project. Promo code POWERPROJECT at checkout. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. And you did great on the run. And you've never really gone on a run before. Play basketball. I've never just gone for a run.

But I would say it's… They would like make you run in basketball you guys gotta run today but definitely not something like a five mile run so that's like ever since I was probably a little little kid when maybe you do different stuff like that at school or something for a

yearly thing it's the first run I've gone on had a great time it's really cool because we were able to chat it's not something I'm gonna do often but anytime i come up here if mark asked me to go for a run what a great way to to have a good chat and mark had some incredible advice for people on just how to build up the ability to run um you want to share that yeah we talked a lot today on the run about like uh doing stuff as slow as you possibly can. Think about that.

Go intentionally run as slow as you, like for someone who thinks they can't run, go intentionally run as slow as you can. Mark has like a protocol that someone could try. I'll mention that in a second. A lot of times, you know, somebody goes into the gym and they'll say, you know, my shoulders hurt when I do shoulder presses. And then I might say, well, what about when you use the five-pound dumbbells? And they'll go, oh, no, there's no pain there.

What about with the 10? What about – like so find a weight that's appropriate that doesn't hurt and maybe that would be a good rehab for you to do. And then maybe let's say the elbow hurts. Well, now you can voodoo floss it, do the reps with weights that don't hurt. You're still getting some work in, you're still moving around the way that you wanted to, you're still working your muscles the way you wanted to, but now you're getting the extra benefit. I did want to mention on the voodoo floss, you mentioned it kind of pulling the swelling out of there. And that's actually a really interesting contributing factor who the hell knows

all the science i don't know if anybody does on it but um you know blood does rush in and out of there your hand like if you're wrapped your elbow your hand will fall asleep um you know i've done it to the point where my arm is like turning like gray or black or something so you be careful with how tight you know you put this thing on i advise advise moderate 10 reps. The fuck? You did that? Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah, I mean. For the knee, moderate tension, 10 reps.

Yeah, you got to test everything out. Just turn my color. Then you're good. But you're right. But you're right. It hasn't been fully explored. Right. There's definitely no study on using a slant board plus floss bands.

There's still a lot more information that needs to be had. But I'll just put it really simple. When I fell with 1,085, my leg was really, really swollen. It was very, very swollen. So you're on a squat. Yep. With over a thousand pounds and you fell. Yeah. My knee, my knee shot in and I fell back. I remember seeing that. You want to say it again? It was pretty wild. Yeah. We've been seen a lot. And I just had a crazy amount of swelling, I think on my left ankle. So if you watch that left side, it's on our right, I guess.

But yeah, the left ankle, nothing breaks, I don't think. Maybe it did, I have no idea. But yeah, it just like, sandwiched inward and behind me. And then plus the weight of my knees hitting the ground was also very painful. If I didn't have knee wraps on, I don't know, something crazy might have happened. So your left ankle was the fucked one, not the right ankle? I can't remember. It could have been the right one. It looked like the right one. Yeah. Now that I watch the video, it might be the right ankle that was jacked up because you see uh how much it went towards the

floor there um but my point in bringing this up is that my ankle was really really swollen i mean my foot was like unidentifiable you couldn't even really see a foot it was just so fat and round and bloated and everything else so i put ice packs on it you know a bunch of times and i talked with stirret stirret kind of hated ice but I was like yeah the ice is actually making it feel a little bit better so I would still if you're in too much pain yeah I would still utilize some of the ice I was trying to rest my foot and put my foot

up high and stuff like that and my daughter at the time I don't know how old she was but I took a voodoo band or maybe my wife did or something someone probably had to help me with it because I was pretty jacked up from that fall. We wrapped it and then we would give it a break. We'd wrap it, give it a break. And I would try to move it around whatever way I could that was pain-free. And my daughter came over and she's like, she said something like, your foot is less swollen.

Like she immediately recognized, you know, here's like a four or five or however the old she is, Like she immediately recognized, you know, here's like a four or five or however the old she is, recognize like your foot was really, really giant and swollen before and now it's less swollen. So that's how effective that shit is. Even when you're compromised that much from a fall like that, just wrapping that thing up periodically. It obviously didn't make me feel better. All of a sudden I was just walking around. It still took weeks. It still took a long time to recover from it.

But the Voodoo Floss stuff is really, really valuable. Sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error. When you go around certain joints, when you go around like the elbow, you might not want to actually wrap the elbow. You might want to wrap above and below. You might need two wraps to do that effectively so you can leave space so it doesn't pinch and hurt so much when you go to move and then the same thing on the knee yeah that's how i do the knee one below the kneecap one above the kneecap i'm not sure on the elbow yeah like pinch too much and it just like hurts like crazy and i'm not saying that you always have to wrap it uh crazy tight but anyway that's just some of the stuff I found on the voodoo floss.

I think having that swelling reduce and then having the body's natural reaction to do whatever the hell it does to get the swelling back and to go back and forth between those two, I think is going to be a really fast way to kind of heal that area. Yeah. I found it to be super effective. Yeah. If someone's in a sport where ankle sprain is a possibility, like in basketball,

the way the ankle sprain happens usually is you're in a shoe that usually has too big of a heel for style. You land on someone else's shoe. The more elevated it is, it simply magnifies the size of the sprain. So the higher the heel of the shoe, the greater the size of the sprain. So if you heel of the shoe, the greater the size of the spring.

So if you're in a sport where that's a possibility, like I don't believe there's actually a level of bulletproof that would excuse you. So let's say you get even more athletic and you jump 40 inches off the ground. Now you land on someone else. Even if you're wearing the best shoe in the world and you land on someone with a size 16 shoe,

it's just going to be how much it sprains. Yeah. So people can do demos where they're jumping on their bare feet with their ankles to the side. That's cool, but they simply would not be able to do that in a shoe with a heel cushion landing on someone else's foot. It would be an ankle sprain. Now jump higher, and it's going to be more of an ankle sprain.

So if you're in a sport where it's a possibility, you need to master flossing for the ankle so that you know how to do it if you need to do it. And for some reason, the karma of that, I feel like you're less likely to sprain your ankle. So like just by knowing what to do, because you can have an ankle sprain so bad that you get home and like you can't walk like Like it's excruciatingly painful. There's nothing like man-made ankle sprains, which means that something about the footwear and landing on someone else's foot, you're having a magnitude of ankle sprain that's physically impossible if you're barefoot in grass. Like you just can't.

You could jump 40 inches off the ground barefoot in grass, turn your ankles to the side and be fine. But you now add the footwear to the equation and you create a man-made ankle sprain and it can be unbelievably painful, excruciating. It could be days before you can walk on your own. It can be to where you even crawl to the bathroom and the swelling is throbbing so much, you're in so much pain. But actually, if you pin it down with a floss band, you can often crawl to the bathroom. My last major injury was way before any idea about shoes and more moderate heel cushion. And I jumped really high. And this was like five years ago, landed on a six, eight guys shoe, direct hit, full sprain, couldn't walk. But because I knew how to use the floss band, walk but because i knew how to use the floss band i was back dunking in nine days from what i was told was like gonna be a cast and six to eight weeks and crutches like this extensive recovery

i was back able to dunk in nine days i was kind of a psycho about it i don't recommend going as psycho as i did but in addition to the floss pinning things down, I would then be doing reps throughout the day. So 10 times a day I was doing 100 reps of like tib raises. So like I was burning out those muscles. So the band pins down the ankle so you have less pain, but it also acts as resistance for the ankle. So specifically for an ankle or a wrist, you can floss an ankle or a wrist even differently than a knee or an elbow because the nature of that joint is now you try to go again like if you if you look at my wrist right now with a thick floss band

it's now like doing wrist flexion extension pronation supination ulnar flexion radial flexion i just named like six motions of the wrist the point is you can do six motions of the wrist with resistance so you can really rapidly rehab your way back up so i'm not even advising it to like whatever you're going to do in terms of ice compression elevate like whatever someone's going to do realize that by knowing a floss band on an ankle or a wrist if you have a bad sprain it can save you huge huge problems in terms of the recovery and getting that back to function. It can help you in just a couple minutes too.

That's the weird thing is like you use it and you're like, holy shit, that actually felt better. Yeah. So on my YouTube, for example, I keep up some like ankle sprain protocols that just kind of show like what I went through and step by step and then how to build it back. But I don't know anything else like the floss band when it comes to helping someone get back from an ankle sprain. I think anything else you can pretty much mimic a different way. There's nothing, I don't know anything to mimic a floss band for an ankle recovery. I want to get back to some of the stuff we were talking about on the run, just running as slow as you can or taking things really easy.

Most people aren't willing to kind of look low enough or search low enough sometimes to find the right answer. You know, a lot of times people won't go to jujitsu because it's uncomfortable. Uh, maybe they went a couple of times and they just found that they kind of sucked at it. They went to go run and, um, maybe when they were in high school, maybe they could run pretty fast. So they go and try and run, you know, a 10 minute mile pace or something like that out of the gate. And they try to run two miles

and now their shins are in tons of pain and this and that. So, you know, I just have been thinking about some of the ways I've been able to, um, ways that I've been able in my life to get momentum, not even necessarily be successful, but just get momentum in something. And it's been just by starting out really, really slow. And I try to share the idea, but I think sometimes it's not, it just doesn't sound fun, you know? And so today when we were, we were filming some stuff, we filmed a video for YouTube and Instagram and stuff like that. I just mentioned this five minute protocol. And I talked about this five minute run protocol. All you're going to do is walk for one minute. You'll jog for one minute. You'll walk for one minute. You go back and forth until the five minutes are up. So you're

just going to basically jog for three minutes or three times during that period. You're going to try to literally go as slow as you can. So when you start to jog slow and you feel like you're slow, go even slower than that. Just slow yourself way down. This is for people that are having a hard time adapting to running. For people that already know how to run, probably don't really need to think about it too much,

but it could be something that could be useful in your warm-ups because I still do this a lot in my warm-ups. I'm like, okay, I'm going to go on a walk. That's part of the warmup. Let me jog for 30 seconds. I kind of feel it out. It doesn't feel great. Like let me jog slower. And I just take my time until the opportunity kind of appears in front of me. And then I just start to go from there. Should the jog still be faster than the walk though? It doesn't, you know, you don't have to put any level of restriction or, you know, that's kind of the point is to like not worry about how fast you're going at all. It's just, are you doing something that would be recognizable to some other people as a jog?

That's all we're looking for. You know, like, man, you guys jogging. Okay, good. And then you we're looking for. You know, like, man, you guys jogging. Okay, good. And then you're putting that stimulus. Right. And then you're gradually recovering from that. You rarely hear, oh, I got shin splints from a 60-second slow jog. But no one's going to social media and saying,

hey, I slowly jogged for 60 seconds today. But you're getting a lot of people saying, man, I wish I could run pain-free. And so that's what stepping backward is. That's what jogging intentionally slowly is for a minute at a time. It's almost like if you're struggling with something, kind of step back and think, could I go lower than society's telling me to go? Because you would think, all right, I went for a run. I went for a two-mile run.

My Achilles hurt or something along those lines. I've never actually seen someone go that low. That's what I did for my knees. I went to lower levels than I had seen anyone go. Regress. But you're actually putting in the stimulus to adapt to get a little bit to get able to handle a bit more so i think that uh approach is great i can't wait to be able to just send people to that video when people are like oh i want to be able to run all right um i will help

you on the knee side of it and give yourself some credit if you go do this five-minute protocol. I think it's kind of a personal thing. Like if you take a loss on doing that, that's one thing. But if you flip your viewpoint, you take a win on the fact that you went out to the sidewalk and did this five-minute run protocol. Shit. Some weeks or months go by you might find yourself nearly sprinting for a minute for the minute and you might find yourself feeling incredible but that might not have been possible without the little adaptation that occur like this is how

the body responds it's cool mark yeah and i i if you think about you know when you're communicating with people just to simply walk backwards it it's kind of the same idea. That's not difficult. If you can already walk forward and hopefully you're not in crazy amounts of pain, you could probably figure out some ways to walk backwards. And then maybe from there you can progress and use some weight and use a sled. Yep, definitely. Once that backwards treadmill come out. They start shipping really soon, like in a matter of weeks.

Yeah. In the next couple weeks, they start shipping out to people. So I put December as like, okay, we'll ship by December, knowing that we would probably be done before that. You don't want to disappoint people. And it's gone ahead of schedule. So they're actually the first pre-sale batches are all done and made and start shipping. Where can people buy your stuff?

Like what's the website for the shoes and for some of the different products? Right now, ATGEquipment.com is where people can buy the equipment. And the shoe I wanted to let kind of be its own thing. The shoe is Uncivilized sneaker.com and then ATG online coaching.com is where I continue to do my work. And we always have 20% off for like any products I make always 20% off for members, whether it's a sneaker or anything else I make, but I didn't want to kind of like jam it all on one, on one site. Yeah. The great, the, the, the treadmill, it's really sick because again you

could have that in a commercial gym you'll have people on it but you could have that at home you could have that in the living room you could have that in your office and you could set up like if you do have a desk that rises a little bit you could have the desk there and you could be because people already have those little treadmills underneath their desk where they walk forward, but you could set this up where you walk backwards. It's something you could do multiple times a day. My parents. I appreciate that. And so, yeah, we're trying to make it accessible, as accessible as we can.

And just like Mark, do more, be more. We're never going to stop trying to improve every single product, but this does backward treadmill is a breakthrough for people at home i love the baby proofing in the background oh that's that's at our hq my kids absolutely love it we blocked off part of the gym and made it full kid play zone that's great you we used to do a parenting podcast sometime but you learn that like kids need their own spaces too and then so the same kid that i might be like oh man he's such a nuisance or whatever but it's like oh man they're having a like my kids go back there and they have a great time and they're just super awesome because they're in like we're in the gym and they're in their own space just being awesome and having

great time so it's been parenting is i love it I mean, because you guys have the sled right next to it. So in comparison to a sled, like how does it compare to a backward sled? I always love a backward sled if you have a sled and turf. The advantages of a treadmill, the backward treadmill, is that you can have it in your house or your apartment. You don't have to get sled and turf and so on. You don't have to worry about the weather and everything else. Perfect conditions.

Exactly. So that's the intended use for someone who doesn't have a gym to go to with the sled and turf. I've also found by having older people visit me at the headquarters and use it, we're able to get more consistent results for struggling cases and older people because they can hold on to the railing. So they can almost reduce the weight of their body. where if you take someone who's even struggling to walk backward and they're trying to drag a treadmill it's often sorry if they're trying to drag a sled

it's often like very choppy and they can't quite get into it but this like they can reduce the weight of their body like they you can push against those rails i'm getting this for my mom i just like she needs this i'm getting sick awesome man mom. I just – like she needs this. I'm getting it for her. Sick. Awesome, man. That's great. So I appreciate you guys letting me show it off. That wouldn't exist without Mark. So yeah, we brought one here and the Soren Exceeded Tib.

They help people. We saw Russell who's a bigger guy who told me like he can't really get into the wall tippy house race and things like that. Now I should show him that he can do it one leg at a time. He might actually be able to do it. But the point is now you guys have the seated tip here. He's able to sit right down, get that smoke and burn, push his strength. So it's not that the things I'm making are necessarily better than the free weight versions or things like that. It's just trying to make the system more comfortable. And I'm going to spend a lot

of time on it until every aspect of that is, is as good as I can get it. And so we're just really at the beginning of that journey of now making that as comfortable as possible. I also want to point out, I think we did mention it last podcast, but I wanted to point out that you have a lot of strength and you're very strong. I think the last time you were here, you deadlifted like 465 or close to 500. Yeah. Yeah. Something like 485 with like the trap bar. That's nice of you to say. Well, I just think it's, you know, I think that people usually see you, uh, just exploring, you know, doing stuff with your own body weight and they might see the dunks and the stuff on the basketball court and stuff like that. But I don't

think they, I don't think they see you see you uh doing some of those heavier lifts like you actually like will squat and do other exercises with pretty good amounts of weight and you advise that for some of the people that you work with that have uh progressed out of pain as well right yeah i appreciate that and yeah if you look at, go look at video of a young Michael Jordan. Hey, that's what I'm trying to emulate. It's a very specific, it's a very lean athletic build. The standards keep me honest. As I said, I often would be lax on maintaining some of the upper body standards. I keep my diet in a way that's going to keep my body fat percentage really low but that that all factors in someone could someone could use the atg system and be very muscular very strong um if you want to see someone with muscle in addition to derrick williams aka mr infinity who's 45 so he he's very similar to me as a basketball guy and he's 45 45. Yeah. But Fernando Lopez, fueled by Fern, he's our other really consistent training partner

that I've been training with ATG for over 10 years. And he's jacked. Like, people are always accusing him of steroids. And I lived with him when we were training people out of a garage of a house that we were helping, like, renovate in order to sleep on mattresses in the house. It's like, I lived with him. We had no money. We'd go to the save a lot food store, get a bunch of chicken drumsticks with Buffalo sauce. Like he didn't

have money for steroids. Like I know, like I know him, like we did not have money to juice. But if you look up field by Fern, you'll see a guy it's like, wow, over 200 pounds muscle has that, that muscular look. That's different than me. His background was football. He wanted more muscle. So, but he does the same exercises I do. So we do the exact same ATG exercises and he has programs for, for muscle development, whereas I'm trying to have this ultimate, you know, as athletic as I can get for my sport. I loved what you told me about your diet. You want to share that? This is like the simplest thing ever.

I mean, I've tried it all. It's almost too easy if I keep a high percentage of my diet coming from protein. And it just really doesn't matter what else I do. If a high percentage is protein, I do great. Body composition is good. Fruit, I would say I get more energy from. Veggies, I get more shredded because it's less calories than the fruit. Sometimes try a mixture. I went 821 days without a cheat meal. My son eventually wanted me to try

ice cream. So I ate ice cream. That was it. Streak ended. You don't want him to cry. Yeah. I knew at some point it would happen. Like I wasn't trying to like, I, when my kid was born, I knew like that was my chance to experiment with it. Did I learn anything? Not really. There's, you don't have a lot to born, I knew that was my chance to experiment with it. Did I learn anything? Not really. You don't have a lot to gain, I think, from going 821 days without a cheat meal. I was trying to make it to 1,000 days thinking I might have some realizations. The main thing I realized is that fruit would help prevent me from caving on my diet,

and that was very helpful data for me in helping people in the real world with their diet was that I didn't have to just say, eat proteins and greens and you'll get shredded, but they couldn't stick to it, and then they would cave on donuts. But giving them a different viewpoint on fruit to go enjoy that mango, and then they'd be able to stick to their diet. So that's all I got out of it. There's no spiritual epiphany waiting, like if your family wants to go have ice cream. I think the idea, when I have a high percentage of my diet protein,

I can go enjoy that ice cream. It doesn't take a hit on me. What type of protein do you eat? All? I would say all. I like red meat. Today, exclusively steak shake. Yeah.

But I very much enjoy red meat, eggs. I also like chicken. I mean, really, any kind of protein you can name. Yeah. So I keep a high percentage of my diet protein. I don't fear the carbs and sugar from fruit. And really someone could add whatever they want to it. Rice, potatoes, bread, you eat anything like that?

Not my thing. I find more enjoyment from the protein and the fruit. I would say those are like my favorite things to eat. Okay. And – but I just keep a high percentage of the protein. And then I don't have to really stress or criticize myself if I want to have anything. Like if I want to have rice, I can have rice and feel great or have potatoes and feel great. And so if you think about, oh, what diet do I prescribe to? Like, oh, crap, I guess I prescribe to a lot of different diets. Yeah, one day you could go mainly meat and vegetables and be lower carb, right?

The next day you could eat meat and fruit. Day to day I could do whatever the heck. So my conclusion after all of it, I had some realizations coming from a super high carb and even taking like carb powders and like from super high carb athletic to then finding out holy crap i actually can still survive on the court on low carb like maybe maybe i'm just more of a mind over matter person or something to then finding out oh wow i can like fruit is not the devil like so i've been through all the different things my kids particularly like fruit they're very active. That's good.

Meat and fruit for my kids, I feel like if I'm putting those very available, they seem to do their best health-wise by keeping this really close. And behavior-wise. Yeah, it seems to work really well. And so my kids eat a high percentage of protein. They seem to really thrive on that. But I don't limit.

They get access to everything you named like everything you named is is presented and there for them to choose from what they like um and and that was that was cool for me to find out for people when they are trying to lose body fat that they want to lose that getting them to shift their viewpoint on fruit that that's not like a loss of their diet that they would just tend to have better long-term outcomes by having just freedom of choice on that. It doesn't mean like I'm making them eat certain things. So freedom of choice to have as much protein as they want, freedom of choice that they can have fruit,

and then I think anything else. But that's my ultimate conclusion coming in now. It's like if i eat a good percentage protein like i'm good let me move on to like other things in life like let me let me work on more important like i don't really want to argue with diet on it i don't want to argue about diet with anybody for me it's all for me it's like i'm good eat a good percentage protein hey if i can go find whatever the you know good sources of protein like like within that, like find, like, okay, like how this steak shake has like different nutrients in it

that you might not get with a typical protein powder. So like I will look for that. Like if I am in position, I can afford good quality protein for me and my family. So I'd say that's about as far as it goes. Like I try to supply good quality protein sources and then like, I'm done. I'd rather be focusing on actual current – like I'd rather be focusing on problems.

I don't think of diet as a problem. Gotcha. I think on that note, I think that if someone was to take their fat loss as slow as they can, that might be beneficial as well because it's not going to feel like anything's really happening to you. If you only lose a quarter or half a pound every other week or so, eventually people are going to start to say, hey, man, you look great. You're losing weight. What's going on? It's awesome. But you're not going to feel like you're dead because you just all of a sudden pulled the carpet out from you and went 1,000 calories a day less than what you normally would eat. But Mark, I'm on an eight-week challenge. I'm 25 pounds i gotta look jacked it's summer strength is never weakness weakness

is never strength oh you got another question oh just at the buzzer no i gotta ask this um meniscus tears are something that a lot of jujitsu athletes and a lot of athletes deal with but you've seen a lot of meniscus tears you've probably dealt with it. A lot of jujitsu guys are like, my doctor says I need to get a bucket handle surgery or yeah, one of those types of things, right? it's not dense, but it's the zero program and see what they can do before going on an overnight. Because a lot of doctors literally really advise just get it removed or get it repaired. But you've dealt with a lot of that. So what is your suggestion? I get these questions every day.

So think from my viewpoint. I've seen winds come in from people on every unique type of condition I've ever heard of. Yeah. And I've seen Winsker. That's different than saying I've seen every single person who's ever tried,

like, but every type of condition you could name, I've seen people naturally win with. That's from, so from my viewpoint, it's best not for me

to evaluate based on your condition, but just show, well, like, did you walk into the appointment with the doctor? Like, you could maybe walk backward. Maybe your doctor would even say that you could do it as prehab. Often someone will report that their doctor said they could do it as prehab. By the time I got to the surgery, they didn't need the surgery. But that doesn't mean it's every case. So at least understand, okay, meniscus, what is it?

It's a rubbery C-shaped shock absorber in the knee, a shock absorber. The depth of the tear determines how easy it is to get the blood supply to heal. Maybe the backward walking is effective for stuff like this because if you've ever done backward sled, it's very different than doing a one-rep max squat. The amount of circulation you can get without damage in the process. If you can find a way to get circulation, so just knowing, I'm not saying not to know what your injury is.

I can only value to at least study and understand what your injury is and then what your injury is. And then what are the methods that are working? Does that seem to make sense for what you're going through? Best is going to be someone who's ATG trained, who is a doctor of physical therapy, who can evaluate. If someone goes to map.atgforcoaches.com, there are a lot of physical therapists who are certified in ATG.

All this means is that they're going to have the extensive medical knowledge and they're going to have to really like forefront natural healing knowledge like I think that's king it's not one or the other I think exponential effectiveness is going to be both yes not like I'm not going to go like screw every condition no no it the best master would be a master of both so that actually wouldn't be me that would be a doctor of physical therapy who also knows everything i know because i i just try to make it so that everything i know is actually something someone could learn like relatively quickly too like you could literally learn everything i know i mean it might take only a couple months and just like you know getting to experience it yourself and and um i don't think it

should take more than a couple months months to know all that I know. But the person could also look into their specific entry and at least understand what that is. It might help them make a decision on does that seem like something they might be able to improve or not. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.